This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Proverbs are in the world of thought what gold coin is in the world of business - great value in small compass, and equally current among all people. Sometimes the proverb may be false, the coin counterfeit, but in both cases the false proves the value of the true.
Business | Gold | People | Proverbs | Thought | Wisdom | World | Business | Thought | Value |
Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL
Gifts, however great, lose their value when the giver boasts of them.
The fundamental rights, like the right to existence and life; the right to personal freedom or to conduct one’s own life as master of oneself and of one’s acts, responsible for them before God and the law of the community; the right to the pursuit of the perfection of moral and rational human life; the right to keep one’s body whole; the right to private ownership of material goods, which is a safeguard of the liberties of the individual; the right to marry according to one’s choice and to raise a family which will be assured of the liberties due it; the right of association, the respect for human dignity in each individual, whether or not he represents an economic value for society - all these rights are rooted in the vocation of the person (a spiritual and free agent) to the order of absolute values and to a destiny superior to time.
Absolute | Association | Body | Choice | Conduct | Destiny | Dignity | Existence | Family | Freedom | God | Individual | Law | Life | Life | Order | Perfection | Personal freedom | Respect | Right | Rights | Society | Time | Will | Wisdom | Society | Respect | God | Value |
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
I believe the recipe for happiness to be just enough money to pay the monthly bills you acquire, a little surplus to give you confidence, a little too much work each day, enthusiasm for your work, a substantial share of good health, a couple of real friends, and a wife and children to share life's beauty with you.
Beauty | Children | Confidence | Day | Enough | Enthusiasm | Good | Health | Life | Life | Little | Money | Surplus | Wife | Wisdom | Work | Beauty | Happiness |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The greatest security of the liberties of a people who do not cultivate the earth is their not knowing the use of money... The people who have no money have but few wants; and these are supplied with ease, and in an equal manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and hence it proceeds that their chiefs are not despotic.
Earth | Equality | Knowing | Money | People | Security | Wants | Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible charge any prosecutor has ever uttered. to me it is the extremist thinkable form of corruption, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption conceivably possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity, it has made of every value a disvalue, of every truth a lie, of every kind of integrity a vileness of soul. People still dare to talk to me of its ‘humanitarian’ blessings! To abolish any state of distress whatever has been profoundly inexpedient to it: it has lived on states of distress, it has created states of distress in order to externalize itself.
Blessings | Church | Corruption | Distress | Integrity | Nothing | Order | People | Soul | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Value |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
It is harder to keep money than to get it.
G. E. Moore, fully George Edward Moore
The value of the whole must not be assumed to be the same as the sum of the value of the parts.
To commiserate is sometimes more than to give, for money is external to a man's self, but he who bestows compassion communicates his own soul.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
There are questions whose truth or untruth cannot be decided by man; all the supreme questions, all the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason... To grasp the limits of reason - only this is true philosophy.
Man | Philosophy | Problems | Reason | Truth | Wisdom | Value |
William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
Old age brings us to know the value of the blessings which we have enjoyed, and it brings us also to a very thankful perception of those which yet remain. Is a man advanced in life? The ease of a single day, the rest of a single night, are gifts which may be subjects of gratitude to God.
Age | Blessings | Day | God | Gratitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Perception | Rest | Wisdom | Value |
And yet we are very apt to be full of ourselves, instead of Him that made what we so much value, and but for whom we can have no reason to value ourselves. For we have nothing that we can call our own, no, not ourselves; for we are all but tenants, and at will too, of the great Lord of ourselves, and the rest of this great farm, the world that we live upon.
Lord | Nothing | Reason | Rest | Will | Wisdom | World | Value |
Peace is a value which man has always sought: Peace among the nations, peace among men, but most of all peace of mind. While man has sought peace external to himself, he may have overlooked the fact that the peace that will influence all living things will be the peace that is first discovered within himself.
Influence | Man | Men | Mind | Nations | Peace | Will | Wisdom | Value |
Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to a formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of accomplishment in living, and the depth of insight into beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.
Accomplishment | Beauty | Challenge | Insight | Laughter | Loneliness | Love | Nature | Pain | Science | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Friendship | Beauty | Value |
Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must not be the mere shell that we admire, but the thought that this shell is only the beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.
Beauty | Mind | Perfection | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Thought | Value |