This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.
It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the public good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it. They known from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more then they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.
Confidence | Despise | Experience | Good | Means | Men | Observation | People | Public | Reason | Right | Sense | Wonder |
Philosophy begins in wonder, and at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Philosophy | Thought | Wonder | Thought |
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Philosophy | Thought | Wonder | Thought |
It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.
Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again.
Beauty | Complacency | Confidence | Earth | Enemy | Envy | Friend | God | Gratitude | Heart | Little | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Malice | Pleasure | Promise | Search | Suspicion | Time | Trust | Wonder | Worship | Wrong | Youth | Beauty | Forgive | Think |
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened.
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.
Circumstances | Counsel | Earth | Enough | Giving | Good | Man | Mind | Need | Noise | Wonder |
Chaim Weizmann, fully Chaim Azirel Weizmann
We may be sons of peddlers but we are the grandsons of prophets.
Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman
Come mothers and fathers, throughout the land and don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, your old road is rapidly agin'. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand for the times they are a-changin'!
Each day, say ‘thank you’ for being alive. Each day, take responsibility for your physical performance. Each day, be careful of human nature [your own and others’]. Each day, behold the wonder of Mother nature.
Day | Human nature | Mother | Nature | Responsibility | Wonder |
Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand on it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has any one who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
Cause | Fear | Freedom | Habit | Sincerity | Truth | Wonder |
The author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the "innocence of eye" that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new; to see traits and characteristics as though each were new-minted from the hand of God instead of sorting them quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise; to feel situations so immediately and keenly that the word "trite" has hardly any meaning for him; and always to see "the correspondences between things" of which Aristotle spoke two thousand years ago.
Ability | Genius | God | Innocence | Meaning | Means | Wonder | God | Old |