This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner
For many children, the start of formal musical instruction marks the beginning of the end of musical development. The atomistic focus in most musical instruction - the individual pitch, its name, its notation -- and the measure-by-measure method of instruction and analysis run counter to the holistic way most children have come to think of, react to, and live with music.
Beginning | Children | Focus | Individual | Method | Music | Wisdom | Instruction | Think |
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it; "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith."
Better | Fear | Happy | Little | Lord | Man | Money | Nature | Nothing | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Trouble |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.
Achievement | Belief | Civilization | Existence | Faith | Illusion | Instinct | Perfection | Present | Wisdom | Work |
We live in the midst of infinite existence; and widely as we can see, and vastly as we have discovered, we have but crossed the threshold, we have but entered the vestibule of the Creator’s temple. In this temple there is an everlasting worship of life, an anthem of many choruses, a hymn of incense that goes up forever.
He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
Absurd | Good | Influence | Insult | Mankind | Nothing | Pleasure | Wisdom | Wishes | Insult |
Negative thinking is depriving people of their natural birthright of health. It is the prime cause in shortening the lives of so many of us. And yet it is so simple to live a healthier, longer and so much happier life. We have only to recognize how God works His wonders through laws governing nature and "human nature."
Cause | God | Health | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | People | Thinking | Wisdom | God |
We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
Imagination | Law | Nature | Truth | Wisdom |
James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield
It is one of the many paradoxes of psychology that the pursuit of happiness defeats its own purpose. We find happiness only when we do not directly seek it. An analogy will make this clear. In listening to music at a concert, we experience pleasurable feelings only so long as our attention is directed towards the music. But if in order to increase our happiness we give all our attention to our subjective feeling of happiness, it vanishes. Nature contrives to make it impossible for anyone to attain happiness by turning into himself.
Attention | Experience | Feelings | Listening | Music | Nature | Order | Psychology | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
We live in a spelling bee culture where the demand is factual accuracy and everybody overlooks the absence of art or meaning in what's said. Too many people sent letters to Nero telling him he was fingering his fiddle wrong. This passion for data is a way of avoiding coming to terms with things.
Absence | Accuracy | Art | Culture | Meaning | Passion | People | Wisdom | Wrong | Art |
Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. It think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.
Hope | Important | Reality | Troubles | Ugly | Wisdom | World | Think |
John Harington, fully Sir John Harington, also Harrington
It is better to love two too many than one too few.
Nelson Goodman, fully Henry Nelson Goodman
Nothing whatever can be said in support of the assumption that nature will usually follow the simpler theory... The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.
Hope | Nature | Nothing | Simplicity | Truth | Will | Wisdom |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
A single mind can acquire a fair knowledge of the whole field of science, and find plenty of time to spare for ordinary human affairs. Not many people take the trouble to do so. But without a knowledge of science one cannot understand current events. That is why our modern our modern literature and art are mostly so unreal.
Art | Events | Knowledge | Literature | Mind | People | Plenty | Science | Time | Wisdom | Trouble | Art | Understand |
The flowers of life are but visionary [illusions]. How many pass away and leave no trace behind! How few yield any fruit, and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough; and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?
We have to serve ourselves many years before we gain our own confidence.
Confidence | Wisdom |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.
Ideas | Responsibility | Wisdom |