This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I cannot be certain not to meet with evil company, but I will be careful not to keep with evil company. I would willingly sort myself with such as should either teach or learn goodness; and if my companion cannot make me better, nor I him good, I will rather leave him ill than he shall make me worse." - Arthur Warwick
"Holy, humble, penitent, believing, earnest, persevering prayer is never lost; it always prevails to the accomplishment of the thing sought, or that with which the suppliant will be better satisfied in the end, according to the superior wisdom of his heavenly father, in which he trusts." - Edward Weeks
"We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, "I am suffering," than to say, "This landscape is ugly."" - Simone Weil
"Better it is toward the right conduct of life, to consider what will be the end of a thing, than what is the beginning of it: for what promises fair at first may prove ill, and what seems at first a disadvantage, may prove very advantageous." - H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
"Many of the commonest assumptions, it seems to me, are arbitrary ones: that the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the complex more advantageous than the simple, the fast quicker than the slow, the big greater than the small, and the world as remodeled by Man the Architect functionally sounder and more agreeable than the world as it was before he changed everything to suit his vogues and his conniptions." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White
"Everyone expects to go further than his father went; everyone expects to be better than he was born and every generation has one big impulse in its heart - to exceed all the other generations of the past in all the things that make life worth living." - William Allen White
"I have said that the soul is not more than the body, and I have said that the body is not more than the soul, and nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, and whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, and I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, and to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, and there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, and there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe, and I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, for I who am curious about each am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.) I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, in the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and everyone is sign'd by God's name, and I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever. " - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"The meaning of life is wrapped up in what will remain after we depart. The meaning of life is to help create a better future... The meaning of life is to be mindful of the past - to always remember - in order to make certain that history’s atrocities are not repeated again and that justice will win." - Simon Wiesenthal
"You had better be ready to change your mind when needed or your mind will change you. The way a man's mind runs is the way he is sure to go." - Henry B. Wilson, fully Henry Blauvelt Wilson
"Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better for the future." - William Wordsworth
"All of human existence is a pilgrimage toward a better world." - Arthur J. Zuckerman
"A little that makes for concord is better than a great deal that makes for division." - Al-Jāḥiẓ, full name Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī NULL
"It is better we disintegrate in peace and not in pieces." - A. J. Ayer, Alfred Jules Ayer
"The successful person is simply one who does his best with the things he can do better than anyone else." - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
"Who lives better than the one who is true to his own inner light?" - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
"The mother said, “This is a better day than the last, for my children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today I have given them strength... This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God... I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know that the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them.” And the children said, “You will always walk with us, Mother, even when you have gone through the gates.”" - Temple Bailey, born Irene Temple Bailey
"Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed." - Lloyd Jones
"A man’s religion is what he thinks about his relation to the universe, or rather, is what he feels about this relation; or better, it is what he does about this relation; or best it is how he acts." - R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth
"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong." - William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker
"The pangs of pain, of failure, in this mortal lot, are the birth-throes of transition to better things." - John Elof Boodin
"Ideas have consequences. If human life is not sacred, it is expendable. It we are mere brutes, then we can be bred for better pedigree like any dog… The eugenic idea is that we do not want to allow “defective stock” to be bred. Today we abort millions of children, often on the basis of a “high risk” of some disorder." - Joe Boot
"For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction." - Joseph Brodsky
"What happiness is, no person can say for another. But no one, I am convinced, can be yappy who lives only for himself. The joy of living comes from immersion in something that we know to be bigger, better, more enduring and worthier than we are." - John Mason Brown
"Optimists perform better statistically. Optimism is power." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Your experiences matter only because of how you perceive them, and become the master of your own thoughts, you can control what filters into your subconscious. It becomes a better reflection of what you actually desire and “broadcasts” to the infinite realm clear messages of those desires." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into real improvement of living conditions." - Amilcar Cabral
"Truett’s Rules: (1) It’s better to demonstrate than to dictate. If you set the example, you won’t need to set so many rules. (2) Fifty percent of the battle ends when you make up your mind." - S. Truett Cathy
"Some men are better served by their bitter-tongued enemies than by their sweet-smiling friends; because the former often tell the truth, the latter, never." - Cato the Younger, formally Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis NULL
"For changing peoples’ manners and altering their customs there is nothing better than music." - Shu Ching or Shu Jing or Shujing NULL
"When we live at each other’s mercy, we had better learn to be merciful." - William Sloane Coffin, Jr.
"Parenthood: that state of being better chaperoned than you were before marriage." - Marcelene Cox
"The opportunity offered by a shrinking economy to experience simple pleasures might be one of God’s better gifts to this generation." - Dolores Curran
"Better than a thousand meaningless words is one word of sense which brings the hearer peace." - Dhammapada NULL
"The conquest of oneself is better than the conquest of all others." - Dhammapada NULL
"Dissatisfaction with the world in which we live and determination to realize one that shall be better, are the prevailing characteristics of the modern spirit." - Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
"Cultures can mix with one another. Explicit design is introduced to promote, improve, advance, and accelerate the evolutionary process of culture. A change brought about by a science and technology of behavior would correspond to a `biological mutation’ towards the better… Yet the final determining cause, whether genetic or cultural, is never an ethical or moral one, but always leads back to the environment. The world is a large-scale laboratory. Both the controller and the controlled are subject to conditioning. All life is conditioning." - L. Francis Edmunds
"Physically man can never arrive at more than a partial view, or better still, his partial view of the phenomena; to this extent all scientific conclusions would appear to be subjective. Morally considered, the matter goes further… the truth at which the experimenter arrives will depend on the character of his experience and on the power of his perception which he brings to bear upon the phenomenon. What we `see’ of the world depends on what we are capable of seeing." - L. Francis Edmunds
"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war." - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"Axial sensibility: the sense that we find ourselves caught up largely in appearances and are trapped in and subject to various forms of bondage, such as political, psychological, and possibly spiritual ones. Coupled with this sense is the further sense that there must be an elsewhere, or another and better way of being here in the world as it is not, one that better engages reality and gives us a sense of liberation rather than confinement. This axial sense may prove to be but an inchoate [just begun, lacking order, origin] and unrealistic longing, but it has been and continues to be experienced by many as genuine and inescapable. It has often been described as a longing for a belonging, driven in part by a sense of not belonging to the world as it is, of being displaced in it." - Stephen A. Erickson
"We need to recognize that both the society and the individual are essential to a morality which we can use in the next century. If we could enter the next century with a wider recognition of the balance - and get away form either collectivistic excesses or the celebration of radical individualism - I think we’d be better for it." - Amitai Etzioni, born Welker Falk
"Zeal, not rightly directed, is pernicious; for as it makes a good cause better, so it makes a bad cause worse." - Farmer’s Almanac NULL
"Spiritual progress must be slow as long as we are worried, frightened, resentful, sick, or discouraged – and those things can be overcome only through prayer. It is a duty and a joy to help others, wisely, and to leave the world a better place than we found it – and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatsoever; so we see that praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness – it is truly glorifying God." - Emmet Fox
"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin
"It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on a cloak of non-violence to cover impotence." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking, or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; to me, the female sex is not the weaker sex." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance. When man learns better, he will learn to befriend even these. Today he does not even know how to befriend a man of a different religion or from a different country." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Understanding religious differences makes for a better understanding of other differences and for an appreciation of the sacredness of human personality as basic to human freedom." - Frank Porter Graham