This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Money is both the generation and corruption of purchased honor; honor is both the child and slave of potent money: the credit which honor hath lost, money hath found. When honor grew mercenary, money grew honorable. The way to be truly noble is to contemn both." - Francis Quarles
"The great achievements have always been individualistic. Indeed, any original achievement implies separation from the majority. Though society may honor achievement, it can never produce it." - George Charles Roche III
"Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste fore natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood." - Samuel Rogers
"If they really want to honor the soldiers, why don't they let them sit in the stands and have the people march by?" - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
"There is no greater unreasonableness in the world than in the designs of ambition; for it makes the present certainly miserable, unsatisfactory, troublesome, and discontented, for the uncertain acquisition of an honor which nothing can secure; and, besides a thousand possibilities of miscarrying, it relies upon no greater certainty than our life; and when we are dead all the world sees who was the fool." - Jeremy Taylor
"Drinking of wine brings poverty, shame, quarrels; leads to calumnious talk, unchastity, murder, and the loss of freedom, of honor, of understanding." - Tosafot or Tosafos NULL
"Not from successful love alone, nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war; but as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm, as gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky, as softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier air, as days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree, then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! The brooding and blissful halcyon days!" - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save their honor, their religion, their soul and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"A person cannot honor that which does not affect his finer sensibilities, his conscience, his sense of meaning." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?" - Hsun-Tzu NULL
"All new doctrine goes through three stages. It is attacked and declared absurd; then it is admitted as true and obvious but insignificant. Finally, its true importance is recognized and its adversaries claim the honor of having discovered it." - William James
"The mischief of flattery is not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honor may be gained without the toil of merit." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Honor isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences." - Midori Koto
"As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.’" - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"The purpose of the Holy Life does not consist in acquiring alms [or] honor... nor in gaining morality [or] concentration... That unshakable deliverance of the heart: that indeed, is the object of the Holy Life, that is its essence, that is its goal." - Majjhima Nikāya
"Whoever believes in God and the hereafter should not injure his neighbor and should honor his guest." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
"Of all human and long-existent beliefs concerning religion, that one seems to me to be most probable and most justifiable which recognizes God as a power incomprehensible, source and preserver of all things; all goodness, all perfection, receiving and accepting in good part the honor and reverence which human beings render him under whatever form, under whatever name, and in whatever manner it may be." -
"Honor and shame from no condition rise; act well you part: there all the honor lies." - Alexander Pope
"I believe that honor and money nearly always go together… Seldom or never is a poor man honored by the world; however worthy of honor he may be, he is apt rather to be despised by it." - Teresa of Avila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL
"Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace." - Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai
"Say, what is Honor? – `Tis the finest sense of justice which the human mind can frame." - William Wordsworth
"Honor is like an island, rugged and without shores; we can never re-enter it once we are on the outside." - Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux, sometimes Nicholas Desperaux or Nicolas Boileau
"Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them." - David Borenstein
"All honor's wounds are self-inflicted." - Andrew Carnegie
"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"All human societies supplement politics with ethics; all of them to some degree are ordered by a moral code, if only honor among thieves." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn
"For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money." - Arne Garborg
"There is but one rule of conduct for a man - to do the right thing. The cost may be dear in money, in friends, in influence, in labor, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice, but the cost not to do right is far more dear: You pay in the integrity of your manhood, in your honor, in strength of character; and, for a timely gain, you barter the infinite." - Archer G. Jones
"All virtues spring from honor." - Albanian Proverbs
"He who lives without discipline dies without honor." - Icelandic Proverbs
"The law often allows what honor forbids." - Bernard-Joseph Saurin
"It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered." - Aeschylus NULL
"It is not places that make men to be held in honor, but men the places." - Agesilaus the Great NULL
"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity." - Alan Cohen
"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity." -
"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity." -
"You should remember that though another may have more money, beauty, and brains than you, when it comes to the rarer spiritual values such as charity, self-sacrifice, honor and nobility of heart, you have an equal chance with everyone to be the most beloved and honored of all people." - Archibald Rutledge
"Honor others, for honor belongs to the one who bestows it and not to the one who receives it." - Aristotle NULL
"Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honor than parents who merely give them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensure a good life." - Aristotle NULL
"Those who desire honor from good men, and men who know, are aiming at confirming their own opinion of themselves; they delight in honor, therefore, because they believe in their own goodness on the strength of the judgment of those who speak about them." - Aristotle NULL
"Wealth obviously is not the good we seek, for the sole purpose it serves is to provide the means for getting something else, pleasure, virtue and honor would have better title to be considered the good for they are to be desired for their account." - Aristotle NULL
"Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honor than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensure a good life." - Aristotle NULL