This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The Hebrews have a saying that God is more delighted in adverbs than in nouns; it is not so much the matter that is done, but the matter how it is done, that God minds. Now how much, but how well! It is the well-doing that meets with a well-done. Let us therefore serve God, not nominally or verbally, but adverbially.
Henry Wotton, fully Sir Henry Wotton
How happy is he born or taught, That serveth not another’s will; Whose armor is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies,— What are you when the moon shall rise? An itch of disputing will prove the scab of churches. I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff. Idle time not idly spent. Now all nature seemed in love, and birds had drawn their valentines.
Character | Happy | Nature | People | Skill | Thought | Time | Truth | Will |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor past actually exists. Nor is it right to say that there are times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future. For these three exist in the mind, and I find them nowhere else: the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation.
Expectation | Future | Memory | Mind | Past | Present | Right | Wisdom |
Cecil Beaton, fully Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Daring | Integrity | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Vision | Will | Wisdom |
Communicate downwards to subordinates with at least the same care and attention as you communicate upward to superiors
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place.
Eternal | Eternity | Events | Future | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Past | Present | Reason | Time | Wisdom | God |
Education is anything that we do for the purpose of taking advantage of the experience of some one else.
Education | Experience | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book on which the thought settles for definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye.
Knowledge | Purpose | Purpose | Reading | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
What is Zen in the art of helping? It is easier to say what it is not than more positively to describe the essence. It is to avoid the boosting of the ego through ‘good works’. It is to aid oneself and others in the pursuit of the good life; to discover and uncover new vigour and freshness in the art of living; to uncover the primal ability of love. Living in the here and now is a major ingredient.
Ability | Aid | Art | Ego | Good | Life | Life | Love | Wisdom | Zen | Art |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Society is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands; it may be sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a day - no! You dash your head against it - you scatter your brains, and you dislodge a stone. Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, and replaces the stone.
Thomas Buxton, fully Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet
The longer I live, the more I am certain that the difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, between the great and the insignificant, is energy - invincible determination - a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory.
Death | Determination | Energy | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |
The teaching of any science, for purposes of liberal education, without linking it with social progress and teaching its social significance, is a crime against the student mind. It is like teaching a child how to pronounce words but now what they mean.
Crime | Education | Mind | Progress | Science | Wisdom | Words | Child |
It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We lie here in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But the power is in us, and that power is finally to be revealed. And what a revelation will that be!
Future | Power | Revelation | Will | Wisdom |
I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be a matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated.
Attention | Business | Competition | Good | Important | Man | Price | Service | Success | Wisdom | Work | Business |