This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Jean Charles Sismondi, fully Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Suffering is the surest means of making us truthful to ourselves.
Felix Schelling, fully Felix Emmanuel Schelling
True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius, for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.
Character | Education | Genius | Individual | Individuality | Inequality | Mediocrity | Progress | Standardization | Success | Superiority | World |
Didst thou every descry a glorious eternity in a winged moment of time? Didst thou ever see a bright infinite in the narrow point of an object? Then thou knowest what spirit means - the spire-top, whither all things ascend harmoniously, where they meet and sit contented in an unfathomed Depth of Life.
Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Means | Object | Spirit | Time |
John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
Whatever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over; but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under everlasting jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not believed when he speaks the truth, nor trusted when perhaps he means honestly.
Character | Falsehood | Jealousy | Man | Means | Suspicion | Thought | Truth | Thought |
Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To work through and complete grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to express and release our feelings fully and to tolerate and accept our feeling for however long it takes for the wound to heal. We fear that once acknowledged grief will bowl us over. The truth is that grief experienced does dissolve. Grief unexpressed is grief that lasts indefinitely.
Attention | Character | Fear | Feelings | Grief | Means | Order | Truth | Will | Work |
Remove the chance to fail and we shall miss one of the best means of developing character.
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
Tomorrow comes to us untarnished by human living. No human eyes have seen it and no one can tell what it is going to be. The Chinese word for tomorrow (mingtien) means "bright day." There is the wisdom of sages and the rapture of the poets in that image.
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean.