This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are three kinds of praise - that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
You can be cured in 14 days patients afflicted with melancholia if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone. It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. All that we demand of a human being and the highest praise we can give him, is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage.
Day | Friend | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Marriage | Men | Praise | Think |
We refuse praise from a desire to be praised twice.
We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.
Discernment | Display | Equity | Flattery | Merit | Motives | Praise | Recompense |
Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure which is useful to them to praise which deceives them.
Generally we praise only to be praised... Refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
To praise great actions with sincerity may be said to be taking part in them.
It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a 'but.'
The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but."
Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy.
John Ciardi, fully John Anthony Ciardi
It is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their convictions. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the courage of their confusions.
Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.
Attention | Faith | Fear | Man | Nations | Pleasure | Praise | Present | Rest | Sacrifice | Spirit | Superstition |
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to is dependency of language and expression.