This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Surely the shortest commencement address in history - and for me one of the most memorable - was that of Dr. Harold E. Hyde, President of New Hampshire's Plymouth State College. He reduced his message to the graduating class to these three ideals: 'Know yourself - Socrates. Control yourself - Cicero; Give yourself - Christ'
To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
Blessings | Character | Famous | Love | Memory | Soul | Sound |
Truth is not always the best basis for happiness... There are people who perish when their eyes are open.
Usually people are not envious of someone’s virtues, but of the honor the person receives for his virtues.
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one every thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
Age | Good | Myth | People | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Old | Thought |
Regardless of where a person actually is physically, he is really where his thoughts are. A person constantly has a choice to think elevated and uplifting thoughts or negative, self-destructive thoughts. How old you feel is greatly dependent on your attitude about yourself. Elderly people can increase their vitality and vigor by considering themselves young.
How many people ever consider that the lack of certain qualities - such as balance, common sense, tranquillity - affect the physical state of the human body?... Did you ever hear of people being sick because they hated someone? This is not uncommon.
Balance | Body | Character | Common Sense | People | Qualities | Sense | Tranquility |
Brooke Astor, (née Russell, previously Kuser and Marshall) also known as Mrs Vincent Astor
It was not until I was forty that I was able to go into a room and say to myself, 'What do I think of these people?' Before that, I always thought, 'What do these people think of me?'
I have sometimes a queer mystical feeling as regards the attitude of people in general. Just as there are physical diseases, so there are diseases of feelings. In a little town like this I feel that on some days everyone goes about hating everyone else. Then something happens and a good feeling comes back. I think the whole of mankind must be like that.
Feelings | Good | Little | Mankind | Mystical | People | Wisdom | Think |
Franklin Pierce Adams, pen name F.P.A.
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody, rather than for somebody.
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
Materialism is decadent and degenerate only if the spirit of the nation has withered and if individual people are so unimaginative that they wallow in it.
Individual | Materialism | People | Spirit | Wisdom |