This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lucian, aka Lucian of Samosata or Lucianus Samosatensis NULL
The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth.
Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.
Consideration | Democracy | Good | Men | Public | Servitude | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is extinct, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality, and when each citizen would fain to be upon a level with those whom he has chosen to command him. Then the people, incapable of bearing the very power they have delegated, want to manage everything themselves, to debate for the senate, to execute for the magistrate, and to decide for the judges.
Democracy | Equality | Extreme | People | Power | Spirit | Wisdom |
Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste fore natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.
Childhood | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Men | Progress | Regret | Taste | Time | Wealth | Wisdom | World |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Lost wealth may be restored by industry, the wreck of health regained by temperance, forgotten knowledge restored by study, alienated friendship smoothed into forgetfulness, even forfeited reputation won by penitence and virtue. But who ever looked upon his vanished hours, recalled his slighted years, stamped them with wisdom, or effaced from Heaven's record the fearful blot of wasted time?
Forgetfulness | Health | Heaven | Industry | Knowledge | Reputation | Study | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth | Wisdom | Friendship |
Maybe we’re just one experiment... Maybe we’re part of the creator’s great caldron, boiling with a wealth of phenomena that the most learned physicians and physicists are just beginning to figure out... I think it’s impossible to think our being here is the result of chance. I think we’re part of a master plan known only to the Creator.
Beginning | Chance | Experiment | Phenomena | Plan | Wealth | Wisdom | Think |
Never live in hope or expectation, while your arms are folded. God helps those that help themselves. Providence smiles on those who put their shoulders to the wheel that propels to wealth and happiness.
Expectation | God | Hope | Providence | Wealth | Wisdom | God |