This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.
Conscience | Consequences | Duty | God | Right | Wisdom |
[Music] It reveals us to ourselves, it represents those modulations and temperamental changes which escape all verbal analysis, it utters what must else remain forever unuttered and unutterable; it feeds that deep, ineradicable instinct within us of which all art is only the reverberated echo, that craving to express, through the medium of the senses, the spiritual and eternal realties which underlie them.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people’s souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.
Business | Commerce | Consequences | Control | Free speech | Government | Industry | Life | Life | Means | Order | Peace | People | Speech | Time | Wisdom | Government | Business | Commerce |
The least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy have consequences very important, and of a long duration. It is with these first impressions, as with a river whose waters we can easily turn, by different canals, in quite opposite courses, so that from the insensible directions the stream receives at its source, it takes different directions, and at last arrives at places far distant from each other; and with the same facility we may, I think, turn the minds of children to what direction we please.
Children | Consequences | Important | Infancy | Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
One finds in art the means whereby he may rejoice in his nature, another the means whereby he may temporarily overcome and escape from his nature. In accordance with these two needs, there are two kinds of art and artist.
He who is held in bondage by his senses can never enjoy even a dream of freedom. It is only by complete escape from them that we arrive at a state of freedom from fear.
Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Wisdom |
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.
Excellence | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Observation | Pleasure | Reward | Strength | Wisdom |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
A democracy can obtain truth only as the result of experience; and many nations may perish while they are awaiting the consequences of their errors.
Consequences | Democracy | Experience | Nations | Truth | Wisdom |
Every author, indeed, who really influences the mind, who plants in it thoughts an sentiments which take root and grow, communicates his character. Error and immorality - two words for one thing, for error is the immorality of the intellect, and immorality the error of the heart - these escape from him if they are in him, and pass into the recipient mind through subtle avenues invisible to consciousness.
Character | Consciousness | Error | Heart | Mind | Wisdom | Words |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
All mysticism teaches that the depths of man are more than human, that in them lurks a mysterious contact with God and with the world. The true escape from oneself, form one’s self-imprisonment and separation from the world, is hidden within one’s own self, rather than outside.
Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL
When you find wealth within your reach, do not try to get it by improper means; when you meet with calamity, do not (try to) escape from it by improper means. Do not seek for victory in small contentions; do not seek for more than your proper share. Do not positively affirm what you have doubts about; and (when you have no doubts) do not let what you say appear (simply) as your own view.