This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"There is nothing that solidifies and strengthens a nation like reading of the nation’s own history, whether that history is recorded in books, or embodied in customs, institutions, and monuments." - Joseph Anderson, fully Joseph Inslee Anderson
"While an open mind is priceless, it is priceless only when its owner has the courage to make a final decision which closes the mind for action after the process of viewing all sides of the question has been completed. Failure to make a decision after due consideration of all the facts will quickly brand a man unfit for a position of responsibility. Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions, experience will develop your judgment to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right. After all, it is better to be right 51 percent of the time and get something done, than it is to get nothing done because you fear to reach a decision." - H. W. Andrews
"Bureaucracy is nothing more than a hardening of an organization’s arteries." - William P. Anthony
"Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"Nothing is evil according to nature." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"Philosophy... consists in keeping the demon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor feeling the need of another man’s doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"This is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"The matter of justice is an external operation, in so far as either it or the thing we use by it is made proportionate to some other person to whom we are related by justice. Now each man’s own is that which is due to him according to equality of proportion. Therefore the proper act of justice is nothing else than to render to each one his own." -
"Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Neglect nothing; the most trivial action may be performed to God." - Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld, or Arnault, called La Mère Angélique
"Pray to God for nothing except what you can pray for openly." - Athenodorus Cananiters
"It is better to be idle than busy about nothing." - Atilius Rufus
"In the ideal sense nothing is uninteresting; there are only uninterested people." - Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
"If there is free will, all things do not happen according to fate; if all things do not happen according to fate, there is not a certain order of causes; and if there is not a certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things foreknown by God - for things cannot come to pass except they are preceded by efficient causes - but if there is no fixed and certain order of causes foreknown by God, all things cannot be said to happen according as He foreknew that they would happen... But it does not follow that, though there is for God a certain order of all causes, there must therefore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our own wills, for our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions; and He Who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our wills." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolution from Him who is supreme, falls to a low condition." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"What then does propter hoc add to post hoc? At the factual level, nothing at all, so long as the conjunction is constant in either case... In nature one thing just happens after another. Cause and effect have their place only in our imaginative arrangements and extensions of these primary facts." -
"The origin of civilization is man's determination to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him." - Henry Christopher "H.C." Bailey
"There is nothing original; all is reflected light." - Honoré de Balzac
"It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”" - Albert Barnes
"Nothing is more certain than incertainties." - Richard Barnfield
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else." - J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
"Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart and with lame endeavor." - George Washington Barrow or Barrows
"Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people." - John Barth, fully John Simmons Barth
"Whatever task you undertake, do it with all your heart and soul. Always be courteous, never be discouraged. Beware of him who promises something for nothing. Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. Do not look for approval except the consciousness of doing your best." - Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch
"Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act." - Richard Baxter
"Nothing is a misery, unless our weakness apprehend it so; we cannot be more faithful to ourselves, in anything that’s manly, than to make ill-fortune as contemptible to us as it makes us to others." - Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher
"Nothing is thought rare which is not new, and followed; yet we know that what was worn some twenty years ago comes into grace again." - Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher
"Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression." - J. Beaumont
"Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it." - Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission." - Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
"From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"You define the present in an arbitrary manner as that which is, whereas the present is simply what is being made. Nothing is less than the present moment, if you understand by that the indivisible limit which divides the past from the future. When we think this present as going to be, it exists not yet; and when we think it as existing, it is already past." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"There is nothing new except what is forgotten." - Rose Bertin, fully Marie-Jeanne Rose Bertin
"Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her." - Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL
"There is nothing to fear but fear." - Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
"To regret nothing is the beginning of all wisdom." - Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"There is nothing can equal the tender hours when life is first in bloom, when the heart like a bee, in a wild of flowers, finds everywhere perfume; when the present is all and it questions not if those flowers shall pass away, but pleased with its own delightful lot, dreams never of decay." - Henry George Bohn
"Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we must upon it." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"One day when famine had wrought great misery in Russia a beggar, weak, emaciated, all but starved to death, asked for alms. Tolstoy searched his pockets for a coin but discovered that he was without as much as a copper piece. Taking the beggar's worn hands between his own, he said: "Do not be angry with me brother; I have nothing with me." The thin, lined face of the beggar became illumined as from some inner light, and he whispered in reply: "But you called me brother - that was a great gift."" - Wesley Boyd
"Let us give thanks to God upon Thanksgiving Day. Nature is beautiful and fellowmen are dear, and duty is close beside us, and God is over us and in us. We want to trust Him with a fuller trust, and so at last to come to that high life where we shall be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let our request be made known unto God”; for that, and that alone, is peace." - Phillips Brooks
"Much as we deplore our condition in life, nothing would make us more satisfied with it than the changing of places, for a few days, with our neighbors." - Phillips Brooks
"If it's nothing more than a smile - give that away and keep on giving." - Beth Brown, born Elizabeth Spruell
"If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a very rich man." - Jean de La Bruyère
"There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads on the heels of great and unexpected riches." - Jean de La Bruyère
"There is nothing of which we are so fond and with which we are so careless as life." - Jean de La Bruyère