This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"They learn in suffering what they teach in song." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Learn what you are, and be such." - Pindar NULL
"All warriors may see an example of their common frailty, and learn a lesson that there is nothing durable or constant? For what time can men select to think themselves secure, when that of victory itself forces us more than any to dread our own fortune?" - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"It is a true proverb that if you live with a lame man you will learn to halt." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"To make no mistakes is not the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"He who does not learn forfeits his life." - Rabbi Hillel "The Elder" NULL
"The purpose of life is to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better. If life serves these purposes, then health serves these purposes and illness serves them as well, because illness is a part of life." - Rachel Naomi Remen
"We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go, for holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high human office, a sacrament when its aim is grand, when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom or for love or devotion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all one pattern. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in education." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What is the first business of him who philosophizes? To throw away self-conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which he thinks that he knows." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The way to overcome the fear and unreality of death and the hereafter is to learn to live with eternal and invisible things here and now. If we live only for the pleasures of sense, of course we cannot take our satisfactions with us. But if we live for the things of the spirit, truth, goodness, love and their like, we shall be fitted for the life which survives the grave." - Ralph Washington Sockman
"We live less and less and learn more and more. I have seen a man laughed at for examining a dead leaf attentively and with pleasure. No one would have laughed to hear a string of botanical terms muttered over it." - Remy de Gourmont
"For just as faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we continue to learn by experience that a similar meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable of in this life." - René Descartes
"We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!" - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"I go to school to youth to learn the future." - Robert Frost
"I need my enemy in my community. He keeps me alert, vital... But beyond what we specifically learn from our enemies, we need them emotionally; our psychic economy cannot get along well without them... Our enemy is as necessary for us as is our friend. Both together are part of authentic community." - Rollo May, fully Rollo Reese May
"Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and if necessary against others." - Romain Rolland
"Education is not the means of showing people how to get what they want. Education is an exercise by means of which enough men, it is hoped, will learn to want what is worth having." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
"Most learning consists of extended plateau periods in which we solidify progress through repetitive activity, followed by little spurts of improvement... With repeated practice, we give up our restless search for happiness in the next moment and learn that by inhabiting each moment with full awareness, we experience a deepening sensory aliveness and richness." - Ronald S. Miller
"No matter how idealistic our hopes... we eventually learn that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind, but about continually confronting them with honesty and courage. It is about ending our feeling of separation from others by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers, and friends. it is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion to our family life, careers, and community service." - Ronald S. Miller
"You will find something far greater in the woods than you will find in books. Stones and trees will teach you that which; you will never learn from masters." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
"Be not ashamed to learn truth from any source." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"If you are proved right, you accomplish little; but if you are proved wrong, you gain much; you learn the truth." - Sefer Hasidism
"To hear always, to think always, to learn always, it is thus that we live truly. He who aspires to nothing, who learns nothing, is not worthy of living." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
"Humility leads to the highest distinction, because it leads to self-improvement. Study your own characters; endeavor to learn and to supply your own deficiencies; never assume to yourselves qualities which you do not possess; combine all this with energy and activity, and you cannot predicate of yourselves, nor can others predicate of you, at what point you may arrive at last." - Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
"If any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou hast to spare; if he press thee further, he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather chooseth harm to find itself than offereth it. If thou be bound for a stranger, thou art a fool; if for a merchant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim." - Walter Raleigh, fully Sir Walter Raleigh
"Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way... Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own." - Socrates NULL
"To learn how to die is to learn how to live; to learn how to live is to learn how to act not only in this life, but in the lives to come. To transform yourself truly and learn how to be reborn as a transformed being to help others is really to help the world in the most powerful way of all." - Sogyal Rinpoche
"Learn to obey before you command." - Solon NULL
"One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it you have no certainty, until you try." - Sophocles NULL
"Revenge is not always better, but neither is forgiveness; learn to know them both, son, so that there be no problem. Son, a man who is always forgiving finds many things wrong; his servants despise him, and so do outsiders. No creatures ever bow to him, and that is why the learned criticize being always forgiving." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL
"In a republic, we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"When we are in touch with the refreshing, peaceful, and healing elements within ourselves and around us, we learn how to cherish and protect these things and make them grow. These elements of peace are available to us anytime... nourishing awareness in each moment." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"God hath thus ordered it, that we may learn to bear one another’s burdens; for no man is without fault, no man without his burden, no man sufficient of himself, no man wise enough of himself; but we ought to bear with one another, comfort one another, help, instruct, and admonish one another. " - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken
"Two things we ought to learn from history; one, that we are not in ourselves superior to our fathers; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior to them, if we do not advance beyond them." - Thomas Arnold
"The world is a thing that a man must learn to despise, and even to neglect, before he can learn to reverence it, and work in it , and for it." - Thomas Carlyle
"`Tis harder to unlearn than learn." - Thomas Fuller
"Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"Sit down before fact like a little child and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses Nature leads or you shall learn nothing." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a person's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that they learn thoroughly." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"Sit down before fact as a little child be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
"While it is the summit of human wisdom to learn the limit of our faculties, it may be wise to recollect that we have no more right to make denials than to put forth affirmatives about what lies beyond that limit." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog