This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims; because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits." -
"Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame - all these belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your love." - William Cowper
"Love hates people to be attached to each other except by himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set up and maintained under another title, as marriage is. Connections and means have, with reason, as much weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry must as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us. Therefore I like this fashion of arranging it rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense of other rather than by our own. How opposite is all this to the conventions of love!" - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"It was the saying of a great man that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man’s business." -
"There in fact four very significant stumbling-blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, long-standing custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge... there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience." - Roger Bacon, scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis meaning "Wonderful Teacher"
"A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness." - Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
"Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of ascent, was adjustable on principles of the common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality." - William Maxwell Evarts
"Marriage by its best title is a monopoly." - Charles Lamb
"The practice of perseverance is the discipline of the noblest virtues. To run well, we must run to the end. It is not the fighting but the conquering that gives a hero his title to renown." - Elias L. Magoon
"Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title." - Thomas Paine
"I trace the title of this world from century to century until I find the whole right vested in God. Now to whom did he give it? To his own children. All are yours." - Thomas De Witt Talmage
"No man can establish title to an idea - at the most he can only claim possession. The stream of though that irrigates the mind of each of us is a confluent of the intellectual river that drains the whole of the living universe." - Maurice Valency
"Taste is not stationary. It grows every day, and is improved by cultivation, as a good temper is refined by religion. In its most advanced state it takes the title of judgment. Hume quotes Fontenelle's ingenious distinction between the common watch that tells the hours, and the delicately constructed one that marks the seconds and smallest differences of time." - Robert Aris Willmott
"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
"There is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Man is born to believe, and if no church comes forward with all the title deeds of truths... he will find alters and idols in his own heart and his own imagination." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"A recognition of truth and the practice of virtue is the title to security for both the individuals and the whole of mankind." - John of Salisbury NULL
"Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. Vice is infamous, though in a prince; and virtue honorable, though in a peasant." - Joseph Addison
"For the educator, complacent in his ivory tower, to scorn affiliation with a cause he considers to be noble, to refuse to attempt to win disciples from the ranks of students he is in a position to influence, is unmistakably to forswear a democratic responsibility, and to earn for himself the contemptible title of dilettante and solipsist." - William F. Buckley, Jr.
"In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know." - Henry Spencer Moore
"Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience, which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection for which the public faith is pledged by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact." - James Madison
"True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing a title can buy is a little time – either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it." - John C. Maxwell
"For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God." - Lactantius, fully Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius NULL
"No religion which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason, will survive the coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have changed and character, not possession of wealth, title or birth will be the test of merit." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"MirrorMask - title of book" - Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
"There are so many kinds of innocence to be lost at the movies. [about the title of her book, I Lost It At The Movies]" - Pauline Kael
"And those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers. " - Plato NULL
"A good title is the title of a successful book." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
"The river of my title is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues." - Richard Dawkins
"So that every man lawfully ordained must bring a bow which hath two strings, a title of present right and another to provide for future possibility or chance." - Richard Hooker
"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America " - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
"He was born into, and seems never to have questioned, that English class system which has been so much abused in the present century. Indeed, several governments have announced their intention of abolishing it, and the most recent prime minister to retire showed her egalitarian principles by accepting the title of Baroness Thatcher." - Robertson Davies
"The main thing that induces me to question the safeness of the vulgar methodus medendi in many cases is the consideration of the nature of those Helps they usually employ, and some of which are honoured with the title of Generous Remedies. These helps are Bleeding, Vomiting, Purging, Sweating, and Spitting, of which I briefly observe in General, that they are sure to weaken or discompose when they are imployed, but do not certainly cure afterwards." - Robert Boyle
"And Reason kens he herits in a haunted house. Tenants unknown assert their squalid lease of sin With earlier title than his own." - Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
"I don't think there is a need for an entity like God in my life." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance." - Sydney J. Harris
"One half, the finest half of life, is hidden from the man who does not love with passion." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"There is no succession in the knowledge of God. The variety of successions and changes in the world make not succession, or new objects, in the Divine mind; for all things are present to him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world in regard of their existence. He doth not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once; “Known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world”; but in their true order of succession, as they lie in the eternal council of God, to be brought forth in time. Though there be a succession and order of things as they are wrought, there is yet no succession in God in regard of his knowledge of them." - Stephen Charnock
"The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?" - Stephen Wolfram
"In our complex industrial civilization of today the peace of righteousness and justice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least as necessary in the industrial world as it is among nations. There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Thomas Jefferson
"The sheep are happier of themselves than under the care of a wolf." - Thomas Jefferson
"But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe." - Thomas Paine
"I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right." - Thomas Paine
"Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstone of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might have lain forever undiscovered." - Thomas Paine
"Certain artists and critics attacked me for painting the ‘Woman’, but I felt that this was their problem, not mine. I don’t really feel like a non-objective painter at all… …It’s really absurd to make an image, like a human image. With paint, today, when you think about it, since we have this problem of doing it or not doing it. But then all of a sudden it was even more absurd not to do it. So I fear I have to follow my desires." - Willem de Kooning