This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One must remember that practically all of us have a number of significant learning disabilities. For example, I am grossly unmusical and cannot carry a tune. We happen to live in a society in which the child who has trouble learning to read is in difficulty. Yet we have all seen dyslexic children who have either superior visual-perception or visual-motor skills. My suspicion would be that in an illiterate society such a child would be in little difficulty and might in fact do better because of his superior visual-perception talents, while many of us who function here might do poorly in a society in which a quite different array of talents was needed in order to be successful. As the demands of society change will we acquire a new group of "minimally brain damaged?"
Better | Change | Children | Difficulty | Example | Learning | Little | Order | Perception | Society | Suspicion | Will | Wisdom | Society | Trouble | Child |
Thought is not sacred, thought is a material process. This is where our difficulty lies. Thought is a movement in time.
There is gold in the golden rule for the man who does not estimate others by the rule of gold.
Gold | Golden Rule | Man | Rule | Wisdom | Golden Rule |
F. D. Maurice, fully John Frederick Denison "F.D." Maurice
In a discussion the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.
Difficulty | Discussion | Opinion | Wisdom |
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 |
John M. Mason, fully John Mitchell Mason
As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every moment of time.
Truth, like gold is not less so for being newly brought out of the mine.
The concepts of morality too are subject to fashion; and he who cannot incline to the ideas in vogue in his century, is misunderstood and decried by his contemporaries.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.
The basic significance of all difficulty is that it reorients us from the external to the spiritual. the meaning and purpose of the world remain to a large extent inexplicable. but one thing is clear: the purpose of all events is spiritual.
Difficulty | Events | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | World |
If a piece of worthless stone can bruise a cup of gold, its worth is not increased, nor that of the gold diminished.
Is pure water different whether it be contained in a goblet of gold or an earthen sewer?
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it.
Character | Childhood | Evil | Freedom | Gold | Mankind | Suspicion | Wisdom | Happiness |