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.
Perfection of hearing is not hearing others, but oneself. Perfection of vision is not seeing others, but oneself.
Perfection | Vision |
He who knows the part which the Heavenly in him plays, and also knows that which the human in him ought to play, has reached the perfection of knowledge.
Knowledge | Perfection | Play |
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 |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The noble person tries to create harmony in the human heart by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails and the people’s minds are led toward the right ideas and aspirations, we may see the appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowing of character... The poem gives expression to our heart, the song gives expression to our voice, and the dance gives expression to our movements. these three arts take their rise from the human soul, and then are given further expressions by means of musical instruments.
Appearance | Character | Culture | Harmony | Heart | Human nature | Ideas | Means | Music | Nature | People | Perfection | Right | Soul | Poem |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.
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 |
Truth is the foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful and perfect, unless it be truly what it should be, and possess truly all that it should have.
Beauty | Perfection | Reason | Truth |
Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure which is useful to them to praise which deceives them.
Never expect to find perfection in men, in my commerce with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They who raise suspicions on the good, on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter.
Age | Behavior | Commerce | Daring | Duty | Evil | Fame | Good | Little | Men | Perfection | Public | Reputation | Sensibility | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Commerce |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels – men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, an that women are chaste.
Chastity | Fortune | Industry | Men | Nothing | Valor | Valor |
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.
Edward R. Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow
I was greatly influenced by one of my teachers. She had a zeal not so much for perfection as for steady betterment - she demanded not excellence so much as integrity.
Excellence | Integrity | Perfection | Zeal | Excellence |
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.