This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words.
Crime | Cruelty | Deference | Devotion | Enthusiasm | Feelings | Indignation | Little | Nothing | Oppression | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Words |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
We do not need more intellectual power; we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.
(Paraphrased by Lyall Watson) Our knowledge of all things is determined by our perception of them, and that perception is a construction based on local expectations.
Knowledge | Perception | Wisdom |
James Cozzens, fully James Gould Cozzens
When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do, so long as what they want isn't dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsociable or obviously impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed; doing what they don't want to do, they won't.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
Hope | Inspiration | Knowledge | Man | Power | Soul | Wisdom | World | Youth | Youth |
Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Family | Lying | Merit | People | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
People sometimes refer to higher education as the higher learning, but colleges and universities are much more than the knowledge factories; they are testaments to man's perennial struggle to make a better world for himself, his children, and his children's children. This, indeed, is their sovereign purpose. They are great fortifications against ignorance and irrationality; but they are more than places of higher learning - they are centers and symbols of man's higher yearning.
Better | Children | Education | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Man | People | Purpose | Purpose | Struggle | Wisdom | World |
Grover Cleveland, fully Stephen Grover Cleveland
Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
Government | People | Wisdom | Government |
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.