This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have the time. But the present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own. Past opportunitiesare gone, future are not come.
The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it.
The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such a head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Circumstances | Opinion | Time | Truth | Will |
There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.
Discretion | Impertinence | Learning | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Mind | Pedantry | Perfection | Prejudice | Qualities | Rest | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Weakness | Will | Wit | Work | World | Talent | Value |
Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink.
Mind |
Our eating, trading, marrying, and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities, whilst they are properly symbols only; when we have come, by a divine leading [illness?] into the inner firmament, we are apprised of the unreality or representative character of what we esteem final.
No man can do anything well who does not esteem his work to be of importance.
The history of man is a series of conspiracies to win from nature some advantage without paying for it.
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.
Behavior | Better | Courage | Good | Joy | Light | Man | Meaning | Pain | Thought |
Men… measure their esteem of each other by what each has, not by what each is.
Suzanne LaFollette, fully Suzanne Clara La Follette
Real freedom is not a matter of the shifting of advantage from one sex to the other or from one class to another. Real freedom means the disappearance of advantage, and primarily or economic advantage.
Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
Confidence | Man | Wise |