This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The sound and proper exercise of the imagination may be made to contribute to the cultivation of all that is virtuous and estimable in the human character.
Character | Cultivation | Imagination | Sound |
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it brings you to the grave, as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there. You love not death; love not the cause of death.
Cause | Character | Death | Grave | Kill | Love | Sin | Will | World |
Next to sound judgment, diamonds are pearls are the rarest things to be met with.
Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure. He who is a stranger to it may possess, but cannot enjoy; for it is labor only which gives relish to pleasure. It is the appointed vehicle of every good to man. It is the indispensable condition of possessing a sound mind in a sound body.
Body | Character | Good | Improvement | Indispensable | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Pleasure | Sound |
Canassatego Treaty of Lancaster NULL
You who are so wise must know that different nations have different conceptions of things. You will not therefore take it amiss if our ideas of the white man’s kind of education happens not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience with it. Several of our young people were brought up in your colleges. They were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger. They didn’t know how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy. They spoke our language imperfectly. They were therefore unfit to be hunters, warriors, or counselors; they were good for nothing. We are, however, not less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting it. To show our gratefulness, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care with their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.
Care | Character | Education | Enemy | Experience | Good | Hunger | Ideas | Kill | Language | Man | Means | Men | Nations | Nothing | People | Will | Wise |
Whatever amuses, serves to kill time, to lull the faculties, and to banish reflection. Whatever entertains, usually awakens the understanding or gratifies the fancy. Whatever diverts, is lively in its nature, and sometimes tumultuous in its effects.
Character | Kill | Nature | Reflection | Time | Understanding |
He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.
Character | Ideas | Language | Little | Man | Sound | Thought | Will | Words | Thought |
Harold Lewis, fully Harold "Hal" Warren Lewis
Fear and risk are different creatures. What some of us fear most - poison in our drinking water, radiation in our air, pesticides on our food - pose hardly any real risk, while some we fear least - driving, drinking and smoking - kill many hundreds of thousands each year.
Lin-chi, also Lin-chi Yi-sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai, Rinzai Gigen, Linji, Línjì Yìxuán NULL
If you meet the buddha, kill the buddha.
J. C. Penney, formally James Cash Penney
Success in business does not depend upon genius. Any young man of ordinary intelligence who is normally sound and not afraid to work should succeed in spite of obstacles and handicaps if he plays the game fairly and keeps everlastingly at it.
Business | Character | Genius | Intelligence | Man | Sound | Success | Work | Business | Afraid |
I know of but one remedy against the fear of death that is effectual and that will stand the test of a sick-bed, or of a sound mind - that is, a good life, a clear conscience, an honest heart, and a well-ordered conversation; to carry the thoughts of dying men about us, and so to live before we die as we shall wish we had when we come to it.
Character | Conscience | Conversation | Death | Fear | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Sound | Will |
If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.
Care | Character | Heart | Man | Men | Mind | Position | Quiet | Rest | Sound |
Vain man would trace the mystic maze with foolish wisdom, arguing, charge his God, his balance hold, and guide his angry rod, new-mould the spheres, and mend the skies’ design, and sound th’ immense with his short scanty line. Do thou, my soul, the destined period wait, when God shall solve the dark decrees of fate, His now unequal dispensation clear, and make all wise and beautiful appear.
Balance | Character | Design | Fate | God | Man | Soul | Sound | Wisdom | Wise | God |
To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
Blessings | Character | Famous | Love | Memory | Soul | Sound |