This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.
It is impossible to indulge in habitual severity of opinion upon our fellow-men without injuring the tenderness and delicacy of our own feelings.
Feelings | Men | Opinion | Tenderness |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without [let alone]. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Man |
A man's character is the reality of himself. His reputation is the opinion others have formed of him. Character is in him; reputation is from other people - that is the substance, this is the shadow.
We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.
No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness - or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.
One should fear the envy of relatives and friends more than the envy of enemies.
If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which anyone is to be forced to recognizes anything as beautiful... The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept... There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concept what is beautiful.
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.
Appearance | Genius | Reputation | Taste |
In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories - the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.
True sympathy is putting ourselves in another’s place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination.
Imagination | Reality | Sympathy |
Of all the ingenious mistakes into which erring man has fallen, perhaps none have been so pernicious in their consequences, or have brought so many; evils into the world, as the popular opinion that the way of the transgressor is pleasant and easy.
Consequences | Man | Opinion | World |
There is no likeness or proportion between life, however painful, and death; and therefore there is no equality between the crime of murder and the retaliation of it but what is judicially accomplished by the execution of the criminal. His death, however, must be kept free from all maltreatment that would make the humanity suffering in his person loathsome or abominable.
Crime | Death | Equality | Humanity | Life | Life | Murder | Retaliation | Suffering | Murder |
The proportion of those who think is extremely small; yet every individual flatters himself that he is one of the number.
Individual | Think |
Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light.