This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is erroneously believed that attention is attracted out of interest; actually our interests are more often determined by our own inner state, and we stay interested because we have learned to place our attention.
Ultimately, what leads to wise choices is love—the attention to others as ends in themselves, as I am an end in myself, not a means to an end. The way love is implemented and practiced is care, which is attending to the true needs of others. So wise choices come about through care.
Robert J. Shiller, fully Robert James "Bob" Shiller
The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
Ability | Attention | Focus | Important | Intelligence |
Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy... In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a prosperous fool.
Character | Good | Men | Nothing | Understanding | Wealth | Value |
It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth and wisdom.
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
Pay no attention to appearing. Being is alone important.
Desire not to change a man into something other than he is. For it is certain that good reasons, against which you can do nothing, constrain him to be thus and not otherwise. But you can impart a change to that which is already; for a man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you. And to limn its outline, so that it is evident to all, and to the man himself. Then, once he perceives it, he will accept it (having readily enough accepted it the day before) even though he has no special ardor to second him therein. And likewise once, by dint of having fixed his attention on it, it has been integrated within him, and indeed become a second nature, it will live the life of all things which seek to perpetuate and augment themselves.
Attention | Change | Day | Desire | Enough | Good | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |
The man who has been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it as something without which he could no more live than he could live without air; he guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and economical. But the man who has been born into a poor position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Chance | Fortune | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Order | Position | Wealth |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The things that make good headlines attract our attention because they are on the surface of the stream of life and they distract our attention from the slower, impalpable, imponderable movements that work below the surface and penetrate to the depths. But, of course, it is really these deeper, slower movement that, in the end, make history, and it is they that stand out huge in retrospect, when the sensational passing events have dwindled, in perspective, to their true proportions.
The real measure of our wealth is our worth if we lost our money.
The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Great wealth is a great blessing to a man who knows what to do with it.