This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov, also Yechiel Michel M'Drohobitch Maggid of Zlotchov
Pray for your enemies that everything may be well with them. More than all others prayers, this is truly the service of God.
Cato the Younger, formally Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis NULL
Some men are better served by their bitter-tongued enemies than by their sweet-smiling friends; because the former often tell the truth, the latter, never.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Friendship being incompatible with truth, only the mute dialogue with our enemies is fruitful.
Truth |
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
There are only three things to teach: Simplicity, patience, and compassion. Simplicity in action and thoughts, will return you to the source of your being. Patience with friends and enemies alike, will give you harmony with the way things are. Compassion with yourself, will settle all the differences between you and other beings in the world.
Action | Compassion | Harmony | Patience | Simplicity | Teach | Will | World | Friends |
If things are ever to move upward, someone must be ready to take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try nonresistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are far more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force destroys enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have in safety. But nonresistance, when successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects.
Those who can take advice are sometimes superior to those who can give it.
Advice |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the older order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
Experience | Fear | Incredulity | Mankind | Nothing | Order | Success |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions | Truth |
It is not [a child’s] hearing of the word, but its accompanying intonation that is understood.
Child |