This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.
Character | Esteem | Evil | Malice | Pity | Stupidity | Unhappiness | Think |
It would truly be a fine thing if men suffered themselves to be guided by reason, that they should acquiesce in the true remonstrances addressed to them by the writings of the learned and the advice of friends. But the greater part are so disposed that the words which enter by one ear do incontinently go out of the other, and begin again by following the custom. The best teacher one can have is necessity.
Advice | Character | Men | Necessity | Words | Following | Teacher |
What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only which gives everything its value.
Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason.
Advice | Character | Conduct | Experience | Passion | Rashness | Reason | Regard |
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
Advice | Prosperity | Wisdom |
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so.
Esteem | Misfortune | Poverty | Wisdom | World |
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime.