This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Our understanding are always liable to error. Nature and certainty is very hard to come at; and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense.
Character | Error | Nature | Understanding |
The absurd man is he who never changes.
There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
There is no more dangerous illusion than the fancies by which people try to avoid illusion. It is imagination which leads us astray; and the certainty which we seek through imagination, feeling, and taste, is one of the most dangerous sources from which fanaticism springs.
Character | Fanaticism | Illusion | Imagination | People | Taste |
... an emerging world based on cooperation rather than on competition, on affirmation rather than on competition, on affirmation of the human spirit rather than on self-doubt, and on the certainty that all humanity is connected.
Character | Competition | Cooperation | Doubt | Humanity | Self | Spirit | Wisdom | World |
The only certainty is that we are here, in this moment, in this now. It’s up to us: to live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert and attentive. We are here, each one of us, to write our own story - and what fascinating stories we make!
Moral principles require reasoning and discourse, to discover the certainty of their truths; they lie not open as natural characters engraven on the mind.
Character | Mind | Principles |
I think there cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason: which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were innate; or so much as self-evident, which every innate principle must needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain its approbation.
Absurd | Character | Man | Need | Reason | Rule | Self | Truth | Think |
He that waits for repentance waits for that which cannot be had as long as it is waited for. It is absurd for a man to wait for that which he himself has to do.
Absurd | Character | Man | Repentance |
Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet: if she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value.
Absurd | Beauty | Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Modesty | Sense | Teach | Will | Beauty | Happiness |
The life of a person who demands and pursues approval is full of pain and suffering. Even if he does receive a large amount of approval, he will still demand more. We can say with certainty that not everyone will honor him as much as he would like and he will cause himself much self-imposed misery.
Cause | Character | Honor | Life | Life | Pain | Receive | Self | Suffering | Will | Approval |
The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.
Character | Existence | Faith | Man | Soul | Spirit | Wickedness |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Wisdom is of the soul, it is not susceptible of proof, it is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; something there is in the flot of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
Character | Excellence | Immortality | Qualities | Reality | Soul | Wisdom | Excellence |
Lord Acton, John Emerich Dalberg-Acton
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; but still more when they are super bad and add the tendency of the certainty of corruption of authority.
Authority | Corruption | Influence | Men | Wisdom |
Love of certainty is a demand for guarantees in advance of action.