This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.
Bitterness | Evidence | Little | Reason | Wit |
As yet, we Americans have hardly begun to think of the details of execution in any art. We do not aim at perfection of detail even in engineering, much less in literature. In the haste of our national life, most of our intellectual work is done at a rush, is something inserted in the odd moments of the engrossing pursuit. The popular preacher becomes a novelist; the editor turns his paste-pot and scissors to the compilation of a history; the same man must be poet, wit, philanthropist, and genealogist. We find a sort of pleasure in seeing this variety of effort, just as the bystanders like to see a street-musician adjust every joint in his body to a separate instrument, and play a concerted piece with the whole of himself. To be sure, he plays each part badly, but it is such a wonder he should play them all! Thus, in our rather hurried and helter-skelter training, the man is brilliant, perhaps; his main work is well done; but his secondary work is slurred. The book sells, no doubt, by reason of the author’s popularity in other fields; it is only the tone of our national literature that suffers. There is nothing in American life that can make concentration cease to be a virtue. Let a man choose his pursuit, and make all else count for recreation only. Goethe’s advice to Eckermann is infinitely more important here than it ever was in Germany: “Beware of dissipating your power; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.”
Daring | Emotions | Expectation | Intuition | Language | Life | Life | Passion | Sound | Expectation |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
The passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state.
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., fully Thomas John Watson, Jr.
The little things we do - or fail to do - often testify louder than the loudest statements of our intentions.
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
The outstanding leaders of every age are those who set up their own quotas and constantly exceed them.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
Heaven | Journey | Life | Life | Love | Need | Wisdom | Wit | Work |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them--it was that promise.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men's. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.
Belief | Custom | Daughter | Dread | Enough | Heaven | Ideas | Knowledge | Little | Love | Passion | People | Shame | Sincerity | World |
Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
The level of intelligence has been tremendously increased, because people are thinking and communicating in terms of screens, and not in lettered books. Much of the real action is taking place in what is called cyberspace. People have learned how to boot up, activate, and transmit their brains.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks