This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.
Curiosity | Desire | Error | Glory | Knowledge | Learning | Men | Mind | Rest | Wit |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Taste |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of Universal History, that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History.
Abstract | Appreciation | Consciousness | Energy | Knowledge | Nature | Self | Spirit | Taste | Appreciation |
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
Sanity was statistical; it was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.
The love of money and the love of learning rarely meet.
Learning | Love of learning | Love of money | Love | Money |
Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
For children, learning is never without emotional overtones. Whenever a teacher ignores the emotions and resorts to logical explanations, learning limps to a halt.
Cultivate fine taste and discrimination in your choice of things. Get a right idea of values. Material possessions that you do not need and cannot use may be only an encumbrance. Let your guiding rule be not how much but how good. A thing you do not want is dear at any price. Avoid surplus age. Choose things that express your own individuality. You must possess your things or they will possess you. Look for quality rather than quantity. Unnecessary possessions bring unnecessary care and responsibility. Excess is waste. Have an occasional stocktaking and eliminate unsparingly.
Care | Choice | Excess | Need | Possessions | Right | Rule | Surplus | Taste | Will |
It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.
Mediocrity | 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.
Better | Control | Destroy | Enough | Knowledge | Learning | Wise | Learn |
Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
Corrective learning begins with the awakening of spirit, and the turning away from belief in physical sight.
Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition - in having put forth the best within you.
Competition | Taste |
Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not ill your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone will you be on the right road to the Gate.
Learning | Means | Mind | Right | Truth | Will | Intellect |
The all-round liberally educated man, from Paleolithic times to the time when the earth shall become a cold cinder, will always be the same, namely, the man who follows his standards, of truth and beauty, who employs his learning and observation, his reason, his expression, for purposes of production, that is, to add something of his own to the stock of the world's ideas.