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.
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 |
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 |
Facts are worthless to a man if he has to keep running to somebody else for advice on how to use them.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another’s expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects.
Advice | Better | Character | Defects | Giving | Little | Receive | Wisdom |
The advice of a scholar, whose piles of learning were set on fire by imagination, is never to be forgotten. Proportion an hour's reflection to an hour's reading, and so dispirit the book into the student.
Advice | Imagination | Learning | Reading | Reflection | Scholar | Wisdom |
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
Those who can take advice are sometimes superior to those who can give it.
Advice |