This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature.
Art | Effort | Emotions | Nature | Power | Study | Taste | Art |
The happiness of the human race in this world does not consist in our being devoid of passions, but in our learning to command them.
Human race | Learning | Race | World | Happiness |
The love of money and the love of learning rarely meet.
Learning | Love of learning | Love of money | Love | Money |
The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Live each season as it passes; breath the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Taste |
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
Learning |
Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
Much learning does not teach understanding.
Learning | Teach | Understanding |
Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
Much learning does not make a scholar.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation! Adults have invested endless hours of learning in growing accustomed to inches and miles; to February’s twenty-eight days; to “night” and “debt” with their silent letters; to qwertyuiop; and to all the rest. To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.
If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which anyone is to be forced to recognizes anything as beautiful... The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept... There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concept what is beautiful.
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.
Appearance | Genius | Reputation | Taste |
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
Better | Choice | Control | Destroy | Enough | Eternal | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Price | Universe | Wise | Wonder | Learn |
The trouble with most men of learning is that their learning goes to their heads.
Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.
Learning |
Jack Kerouac, born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac
No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
When we trust our brother, whom we have seen, we are learning to trust God, whom we have not seen.