This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
To be fond of learning is to draw close to wisdom. To practice with vigor is to draw close to benevolence. To know the seen of shame is to draw close to courage. He who knows these three things knows how to cultivate his own character. Knowing how to cultivate his own character, he knows how to govern other men. Knowing how to govern other men, he knows how to govern the world, it states, and its families.
Benevolence | Character | Courage | Knowing | Learning | Men | Practice | Shame | Wisdom | World | Govern |
Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the small and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure.
Elegance | Force | Life | Life | Pleasure | Regulation | Taste | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert their natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very nature of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity, whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, when the communion of our country is dissolved.
Body | Charity | Danger | Equity | Justice | Light | Manners | Nature | Obligation | People | Politics | Rage | Taste | War | Danger |
It is as common for men to change their taste as it is uncommon for them to change their inclination.
Change | Inclination | Men | Taste |
It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observation of time and place and of decency in general that what is called taste consists; and which is in reality no other that a more refined judgment. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Cause | Judgment | Manners | Observation | Reality | Skill | Taste | Time | Wrong |
Good taste is the product of judgment rather than of intellect.
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; It should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Change | Children | Education | Future | Learning | Parents | People | Society | Time | Will | World |
Education is the learning how... to distinguish that of things some are in our power, but others are not; in our power are will and all acts which depend on the will; things not in our power are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country, and, generally, all with whom we live in society.
Body | Children | Distinguish | Education | Learning | Parents | Possessions | Power | Society | Will |
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Good | Integrity | Intelligence | Sense | Taste |
It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Assertion | Controversy | Evidence | Government | Ignorance | Learning | Men | Time |
The justest division of human learning is that derived from the three different faculties of the soul, the seat of learning; history being relative to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason.
History | Imagination | Learning | Memory | Philosophy | Poetry | Reason | Soul |
Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood’s learning is made up of moments. It isn’t steady. It’s a pulse.
Men’s thoughts are as much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed.
Deeds | Inclination | Learning | Men | Deeds |
Without controversy, learning doth make the mind of men gentle, generous, amiable and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them curlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Assertion | Controversy | Evidence | Government | Ignorance | Learning | Men | Mind | Time |