This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It is not enough to show people how to live better: there is a mandate for any group with enormous powers of communication to show people how to be better." - Marya Mannes
"Since my house burned down, I now own a better view of the rising moon." - Mizuta Masahide
"Who are happy in marriage? Those with so little imagination that they cannot picture a better state, and those so shrewd that they prefer quiet slavery to hopeless rebellion." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"In a life well lived, each succeeding day becomes better than the last. Each day, each year, each experience does not stand alone; it cannot be separated from what has happened before or what may happen after. Yesterday determines today, and today helps determine tomorrow." - John Homer Miller
"Example is better than precept." - David Macbeth Moir
"To the acquisition of the rare quality of politeness, so much of the enlightened understanding is necessary that I cannot but consider every book in every science, which tends to make us wiser, and of course better men, as a treatise on a more enlarged system of politeness." - Neil Monro, sometimes wrote under pen name Hugh Foulis
"I quote others [in order to better express my own self] only the better to express myself." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. and if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"A word too little is better than a word too much." - J. C. Nevin
"It is better to create than to be learned; creating is the true essence of life." - Barthold Niebuhr, fully Barthold Georg Neibuhr
"When a person has a major problem, worrying prevents him from thinking of practical ways to solve the problem. The calmer you are, the better you will be able to think of the wisest course of action." - Yehuda Lave
"Every man has at times in his mind the ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself." - Joseph Parker
"Every man has, at times, in his mind the ideal of what should be, but is not. In all men that seek to improve, it is better than the actual character." - Theodore Parker
"Mankind never loses any good thing, physical, intellectual, or moral, till it finds a better, and then the loss is a gain. No steps backward, is the rule of human history. What is gained by one man is invested in all men, and is a permanent investment for all time." - Theodore Parker
"I believe we are here on earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place... Life is to be lived to its fullest so that death is just another chapter. Memories of our lives, our works and our deeds will continue in others." - Rosa Parks
"God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers." - William Penn
"Men who fight about religion have no religion to fight about, since they do in the name of religion the thin which religion itself forbids. To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious. It were better to be of no church than to be bitter in any." - William Penn
"If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world." - Claude Denson Pepper
"Each of us was placed here for a special purpose. I believe that it is each person’s responsibility to determine what he or she can do to make the world a better place - and then go out and do it... Take full responsibility for our actions. Risk failure." - Henry Ross Perot
"In this thing one man is superior to another, that he is better able to bear adversity and prosperity." - Philemon NULL
"Nothing is better than to search for the true God, even if the discovery of Him eludes human capacity, since the very wish to learn, if earnestly entertained, produces untold joys and pleasures." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"One wise thought is better than many hands." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"'Tis better to profit by a horrible example than to be one." - Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
"To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we condemn in others, is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so." - Alexander Pope
"Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than partyline line or public opinion; when the mood of Beethoven or Bach will be the mood of your total existence; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians." - Wilhelm Reich
"Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more." - Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
"It is far better to forget a benefit than an injury." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
"I grew up among wise man and found that there is nothing better for man than silence. Knowledge is not the main thing, but deeds." - Sayings of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot or Pirqe Aboth) NULL
"Self-expression can be wrong as well as right... When self-expression is identified with irrational surrender to lower instincts, it ends by making the person a slave to those passions. Self-denial is not a renunciation of freedom; it is rather the taming of what is savage and base in our nature for what is higher and better. It is a release from imprisonment by our lusts and passions." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"A person easily becomes a slave to his habits. The most difficult habits to break are the habits of thinking in a certain manner. You can have a large amount of control over yourself by working to obtain positive habits. Even with habits of thoughts, we have the ability to utilize the power of habit to form the habit of thinking rationally and productively, and to elevate our thoughts to such a degree that we will have changed our entire thought patterns for the better." - Yitzchok Isaac Sher
"Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also." - William Gilmore Simms
"That charity alone endures which flows from a sense of duty and a hope in God. this is the charity that treads in secret those paths of misery from which all but the lowest of human wretches have fled; this is that charity which no labor can weary, no ingratitude detach, no horror disgust; that toils, that pardons, that suffers; that is seen by no man, and honored by no man, but, like the great laws of Nature, does the work of God in silence, and looks to a future and better world for its reward." - Sydney Smith
"The Universe is governed by divine laws, which, unlike those of man’s making, are immutable, inviolable and an end to themselves, not instruments for the attainment of particular objects. The love of God is man’s only true good. From other passions we can free ourselves, but not from love, because for the weakness of our nature we could not subsist without the enjoyment of something that may strength us by our union with it. Only the knowledge of God will enable us to subdue the hurtful passions, This, as the source of all knowledge, is the most perfect of all; and inasmuch as all knowledge is derived from the knowledge of God, we may know god better than we know ourselves. This knowledge in time leads to the love of God, which is the soul’s union with Him. The union of the soul with God is its second birth, and therein consists man’s immortality and freedom." -
"We do not desire a thing because we adjudge it to be good, but, on the contrary, we call it good because we desire it, and consequently everything to which we are averse we call evil. Each person, therefore, according to his affect judges or estimates what is good and what is evil, what is better and what is worse, and what is the best and what is the worst. Thus the covetous man thinks plenty of money to be the best thing and poverty the worst." -
"As for my labors, if they can but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning’s cheerfulness to an honest mind - in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive from then the smallest addition to their innocent diversions - I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
"The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that." - John Sterling
"Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed." - Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"Prejudices may be intense, but their lives are limited. To discover when they are dead and to bury them, is an important matter, and no unseemly tears should be shed at their funerals... Human nature is so constituted, that all see, and judge better, in the affairs of other men, than in their own." -
"He who is sincere has the easiest task in the world, for, truth being always consistent with itself, he is put to no trouble about his words and actions; it is like traveling on a plain road, which is sure to bring you to your journey's end better than byways in which many lose themselves." - John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
"Mere sorrow, which weeps and sits still, is not repentance. Repentance is sorrow converted into action; into a movement toward a new and better life." - M. R. Vincent