This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The man who listens is from the outset a spiritual being compared with the person who merely speaks, sees, and grasps. Hearing and taking in are spiritual activities: hearing the unchangeable, the untouchable, the incomprehensible, the constant, the eternal within the Melos. Only someone who listens can also recognize, interpret, think, speak, apprehend and comprehend.
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
The only benefit of flattery is that by hearing what we are not, we may be instructed what we ought to be.
Groucho Marx, Pseudonym for Julius Henry Marx
One of the best hearing aids a man can have is an attentive wife.
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
In solitude the mind gains strength, and learns to lean upon herself; in the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacherous supports - the feigned compassion of one, the flattery of a second, the civilities of a third, the friendship of a fourth - they all deceive and bring the mind back to retirement, reflection, and books.
Books | Compassion | Flattery | Mind | Reflection | Retirement | Solitude | Strength | Wisdom | World | Friendship |
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The mischief of flattery is not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honor may be gained without the toil of merit.
Ambition | Flattery | Honor | Influence | Man | Merit | Opinion |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect. A prudent prince must therefore take a third course, by choosing for his council wise men, and giving these alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else; but he must ask them about everything and hear their opinion, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way.
Flattery | Giving | Liberty | Men | Nothing | Opinion | Respect | Self | Truth | Will | Wise | Understand |
It is not [a child’s] hearing of the word, but its accompanying intonation that is understood.
Child |