This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.
Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |
Contentment furnishes constant joy. Much covetousness, constant grief. To the contented, even poverty is joy. To the discontented, even wealth is a vexation.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as poverty of what it has not.
The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.
Character | Enthusiasm | Poverty | Time |
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so.
Esteem | Misfortune | Poverty | Wisdom | World |
We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime.
The observation is that, generally speaking, poverty of speech is the outward evidence of poverty of mind
Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food an raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty - the shame of being though poor - it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.
A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness. Man and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocket-book than to suffer from a poor soul.
Beauty | Better | Man | Money | Poverty | Soul | Wisdom | World |