This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner; neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify men for usefulness and happiness.
Men | Prosperity | Success | Usefulness |
Beware of him who gives thee advice according to his own interests.
Advice |
It is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends directly on the energy and intelligence with which our natural resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuity. Finally, it is ominously evident that these resources are in the course of rapid exhaustion.
Energy | Intelligence | People | Power | Prosperity | Safe |
Prosperity and Vanity are often lodg'd together. Prosperity destroys Fools, endangers the Wise, Prosperity has every Thing cheap. Prosperity knows not the worth of Patience. Prosperity takes no Counsel, and fears no Calamity. Prosperous Men seldom mend their Faults.
Calamity | Counsel | Men | Patience | Prosperity | Wise | Worth |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate - that’s my philosophy.
Advice | Philosophy |
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it. Love's Labour 's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2.
Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda
The thing to do when you're impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. It is always on our left, as at arm’s length. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you have the feeling that your companion is there watching you. How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking us? Death is the only wise advice that we have. When we feel that everything is going wrong, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong. That nothing really matters outside its touch. Ask death's advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them... It doesn't matter what the decision is. Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else. In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only decisions we make in the face of our inevitable death.
Advice | Death | Decision | Important | Inevitable | Men | Nothing | Will | Wise | World | Wrong |
David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz
The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action. It's still good advice to cross bridges as we come to them.
Ability | Action | Advice | Good | Perfection | Problems | Work |
All through my life the counsel to depend on prayer has been prized above almost any other advice I have ever received. It has become an integral part of me, an anchor, a constant source of strength and the basis of my knowledge of things divine.
Advice | Counsel | Knowledge | Life | Life | Prayer | Strength | Counsel |
In the day of prosperity we have many refuges to resort to; in the day of adversity only one.
Adversity | Day | Prosperity |
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.
Appearance | Peace | Prosperity | Sadness | Happiness |