This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |
The goal of wisdom is laughter and play - not the kind that one sees in little children who do not yet have the faculty of reason, but the kind that is developed in those who have grown mature through both time and understanding. If someone has experienced the wisdom that can only be heard from oneself, learned from oneself, and created from oneself, he does not merely participate in laughter: he becomes laughter itself.
Character | Children | Laughter | Little | Play | Reason | Time | Understanding | Wisdom |
Who train themselves in wisdom cultivate true courage.
Learning, if rightly applied, makes a young man thinking, attentive, industrious, confident and wary; and an old man cheerful and useful. It is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, an entertainment at all times; it cheers in solitude, and gives moderation and wisdom in all circumstances.
Adversity | Character | Circumstances | Entertainment | Learning | Man | Moderation | Prosperity | Solitude | Thinking | Wisdom | Moderation | Old |
May those who represent advanced views bear in mind that true wisdom is always joined with mildness, that malice never converts the erring but strengthens him in his attitude, and that it is very unfitting to combat error (so long as this does not assume the aspect of injustice) with the weapons of hatred.
Consideration is not merely a matter of emotional goodwill but of intellectual vigor and moral self-sacrifice. Wisdom must combine with sympathy. That is why consideration underlies the phrase "a scholar and a gentleman," which really sums up the ideal of the output of a college education.
Character | Consideration | Education | Sacrifice | Scholar | Self | Self-sacrifice | Sympathy | Wisdom |
John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
The best people need afflictions for trial of their virtue. How can we exercise the grace of contentment, if all things succeed well; or that of forgiveness, if we have no enemies?
Character | Contentment | Forgiveness | Grace | Need | People | Virtue | Virtue | Trial |