This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"One sees the past better than it was; one finds the present worse than it is; one hopes for a future happier than it will be." - Madame d'Épinay, born born Florence Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles Petronilla
"A strong foe is better than a weak friend." - Edward Dahlberg
"Nothing enhances authority better than silence." - Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
"Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one complies." - Isaac D'Israeli
"It was probably a mistake to pursue happiness, much better to create happiness, still better to create happiness for others." - Lloyd C. Douglas, fully Lloyd Cassel Douglas, born Doya C. Douglas
"A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness. Man and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocket-book than to suffer from a poor soul." - Thomas Dreier
"If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time - not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day." - Thomas Dreier
"Better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than fail in assisting the unfortunate." - Du Coeur NULL
"True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it." - Alexandre Dumas, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie
"To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is still better." - Tyron Edwards
"To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder." - Albert Einstein
"One couldn’t carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we put it ourselves." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
"There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it." - Henry Havelock Ellis
"Be short in all religious exercises. Better leave the people longing than loathing." - Nathaniel Emmons
"His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require." -
"Better to die in action than sitting still." - Euripedes NULL
"Silence is sometimes better than speech, and speech sometimes than silence." - Euripedes NULL
"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army." - David Everett
"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant." - Edward Everett
"While others talked about what they would do if they heard that they had to die within that very hour, Saint Charles Borromaeus said he would continue his game of chess. For he had begun it only in honor of god, and he could wish for nothing better than to be called away in the midst of an action undertaken in the honor of God." -
"Most people like praise. Many people have an unreasonable fear of administering it; it is part of the puritanical dislike for anything that is agreeable - to others. When it is really deserved, most people expand under it into richer and better selves." - Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell
"The doctrine of foods is of great ethical and political significance. Food becomes blood, blood becomes heart and brain, thought and mind stuff. Human fare is the foundation of human culture and thought. Would you improve the people? Give them, instead of declamations against sin, better food. Man is what he eats." -
"Above all others is justice: success is a good thing; wealth is good also; honor is better; but justice excels them all." - David Dudley Field II
"Almost every conspicuously successful American owes his rise to having thrown himself heartily into his work and to having done it better than ordinary. Promotion comes to those who demonstrate that they can do more and better work than others. Look upon your work as the lever by which you can rise in the world. To get the best and the most out of life, put the best and the most of yourself into it. Eventually each of us gets rewards we merit." - B. C. Forbes, fully Bertie Charles "B.C." Forbes
"Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
"The advertising industry is one of our most basic forms of communication and, allegedly, of information. Yet, obviously, much of this ostensible information is not purveyed to inform but to manipulate and to achieve a result -- to make somebody think he needs something that very possibly he doesn't need, or to make him think one version of something is better than another version when the ground for such a belief really doesn't exist." - Marvin E. Frankel
"Creditors have better memories than debtors; they are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times." - Benjamin Franklin
"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it; "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith."" - Benjamin Franklin
"None preaches better than the ant, and she say nothing." - Benjamin Franklin
"To be sure, if it is the purpose of educators to stifle the child’s power of independent thought as early as possible, in order to produce that ‘good behavior’ which is so highly prized, they cannot do better than deceive children in sexual matters and intimidate them by religious means. The stronger characters will, it is true, withstand these influences; they will become rebels against the authority of their parents and later against every other form of authority. When children do not receive the explanations for which they turn to their elders, they go on tormenting themselves in secret with the problem, and produce attempts at solution in which the truth they have guessed is mixed up in the most extraordinary way with grotesque inventions; or else they whisper confidences to each other which, because of the sense of guilt in the youthful inquirers, stamp everything sexual as horrible and disgusting." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"If you have some respect for people as they are, you ought to be and could be more effective in helping them to become better than they are." - Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner
"One must remember that practically all of us have a number of significant learning disabilities. For example, I am grossly unmusical and cannot carry a tune. We happen to live in a society in which the child who has trouble learning to read is in difficulty. Yet we have all seen dyslexic children who have either superior visual-perception or visual-motor skills. My suspicion would be that in an illiterate society such a child would be in little difficulty and might in fact do better because of his superior visual-perception talents, while many of us who function here might do poorly in a society in which a quite different array of talents was needed in order to be successful. As the demands of society change will we acquire a new group of "minimally brain damaged?"" - Norman Geschwind
"The man who comes up with a means of doing or producing almost anything better, faster, or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips." - J. Paul Getty, fully Jean Paul Getty
"It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"It is better to do the most trifling thing in the world than to regard half an hour as a trifle." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We would know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"No research is ever quite complete. It is the glory of a good bit of work that it opens the way for something still better, and this repeatedly leads to its own eclipse." - Mervyn Henry Gordon
"No man prays in faith who thinks he knows better than God; or who, not knowing, wishes that his ignorance may overrule God's wisdom." - William Gurnall
"There are three kinds of silence. Silence from words is good, because inordinate speaking tends to evil. Silence, or rest from desires and passions is still better, because it prompts quietness of spirit. But the best of all is silence from unnecessary and wandering thoughts, because that is essential to internal recollection, and because it lays a foundation for a proper reputation and for silence in other respects." -
"Men as yet need some help to their imagination. There remains still room for a little illusion. It is better for men, it is better for women, that each somewhat idealize the other. Much is lost when life has lost its atmosphere, and is reduced to naked fact." - Gail Hamilton, Pseud. of Mary A. Dodge
"It is better to love two too many than one too few." - John Harington, fully Sir John Harington, also Harrington
"The practical man is the adventurer, the investigator, the believer in research, the asker of questions, the man who refuses to believe that perfection has been attained... There is no thrill or joy in merely doing that which any one can do... It is always safe to assume, not that the old way is wrong, but that there may be a better way." - Henry Robert Harrower