This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their restraint.
Fairness | Freedom | Individual | Obedience | Perfection | Restraint |
Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.
Charity | Perfection | Religion |
Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.
Attention | Faith | Fear | Man | Nations | Pleasure | Praise | Present | Rest | Sacrifice | Spirit | Superstition |
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to is dependency of language and expression.
John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know ho to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.
Creativity | Day | Light | Men |
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life... Variation, experiment and insurgence are all of them attributes of freedom.
Beauty | Contemplation | Day | Experiment | Freedom | Life | Life | Mystery | Perfection | Poverty | Search | Sound | Truth | Contemplation |
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
Despondency | Laziness | Perfection | Will |
The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist - this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul - a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.
Art | Day | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Music | Past | Play | Present | Soul | Art |
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then be fairly inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education.
Age | Character | Education | Family | Manners | Men | Opinion | Society | Society |
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
We demand of our political life greater certainty and greater perfection than we demand of our personal life.
Life | Life | Perfection |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
There is nothing to test the perfection of love better than trust. Wholehearted love for another person carries confidence with it. Whatever one dares to trust God for, he really finds in God and a thousand times more.
Better | Confidence | God | Love | Nothing | Perfection | Trust | God |
The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine.
To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions - between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, co-operativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation.
Altruism | Evil | Good | Imperfection | Man | Need | Optimism | Perfection | Selfishness |
The way of this world is to praise dead saints and persecute living ones.
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
Man | Perfection |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
The urge to do and be that which is the noblest, the most beautiful of which we are capable, is the creative impulse of every high achievement. We strive for perfection here because we long to be restored to our oneness with God.
Achievement | God | Impulse | Oneness | Perfection |
“Every morning of the world I give thanks for all the wonderful things in my life,” declared a young man enthusiastically. “And do you know something? It’s strange indeed, but the more I give thanks, the more I have reason to be thankful. For, you see, blessings just pile up on me one after another like nobody’s business”... The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for... The attitude of gratitude revitalizes the entire mental process by activating all other attitudes, thus stimulating creativity... Remember that praise and thanksgiving are the most powerful prayers of all.
Art | Blessings | Business | Creativity | Gratitude | Life | Life | Man | Practice | Praise | Reason | Thankfulness | World | Art |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Those who are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.