This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
Only a small mind traffics in scorn; a mind whose truth accords no place to others’. But we who knew that different truths can coexist thought not that we were lowering ourselves by countenancing another’s truth, unpalatable though it might seem.
When Abraham Lincoln was a young man he ran for the Legislature in Illinois and was badly swamped. Next he entered business, failed and spent seventeen years of his life paying up the debts of a worthless partner. He was in love with a beautiful young woman to whom he became engagedand then, she died. Later he married a woman who was a constant burden to him. Entering politics again, he was badly defeated for Congress. He failed to get an appointment to the U.S. Land Office. He was badly defeated for the U.S. Senate. In 1856 he became a candidate for the Vice-Presidency and was again defeated. In 1858 he was defeated by Douglas. One failure after another, bad failures, great setbacks. In the face of all this he eventually became one of the country's greatest men, if not the greatest. When you think of a series of setbacks like this, doesn't it make you feel small to become discouraged, just because you think that you're having a hard time in life?
Business | Failure | Land | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Office | Politics | Time | Woman | Failure | Think |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. but when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence, and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems ! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How e laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.
Comedy | Existence | Life | Life | Little | Men | Space | Struggle | World |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life, is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle. It is by what we do ourselves that we learn.
Birth | Cause | Children | Death | Effort | Experience | Force | Life | Life | Mistake | Success | Learn |
The consideration of the small addition often made by wealth to the happiness of the possessor may check the desire and prevent the insatiability which sometimes attends it... Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.
Consideration | Desire | Power | Respect | Wealth | Will | Respect | Happiness |
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.
Age | Day | Future | Happy | Life | Life | Old age | Past | Present | Time | Youth | Youth | Old |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The Master said... 'Have no friends not equal to yourself'....The Master said, 'The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort'... The Master said, 'It is only the wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change.'... Being true to oneself is the law of God. To try to be true to oneself is the law of man.
Change | Comfort | God | Law | Man | Virtue | Virtue | Friends |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Specious words confound virtue, and impatience in small matters may confound great plans.
Impatience | Virtue | Virtue | Words |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.