This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.
Civilization | Past | Present | Wisdom |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell. To live in the future is a contradiction in terms. The future is dead, in the perfectly definite sense it is not alive.
Contradiction | Future | Necessity | Nothing | Past | Present | Sense | Wisdom |
The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and the facts established by experiment.
Consciousness | Doctrine | Existence | Experiment | Wisdom | World |
Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.
Consequences | Courage | Discipline | Effort | Past | Present | Wisdom |
The fundamental defect in the present state of democracy is the assumption that political and economic freedom can be achieved without first freeing the mind. Freedom of mind is not something that spontaneously happens. It is not achieved by mere absence of obvious restraints. It is a product of constant unremitting nurture of right habits of observation and reflection.
Absence | Democracy | Freedom | Mind | Observation | Present | Reflection | Right | Wisdom |
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved... as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.
Hypothesis | Mind | Wisdom |
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
History studies not just facts and institutions, its real subject is the human spirit.
I must think forever: would an eternal train of my usual thoughts be either worthy of me or useful to me? I must feel forever: would an eternal reign of my present spirit and desires please or satisfy me? I must act forever: would an eternal course of my habitual conduct bring happiness, or even bear reflection?... Habits are soon assumed; but when we endeavor to strip them off, it is being flayed alive.
Conduct | Eternal | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Wisdom | Think |
It seems hard to sneak a look at a God's cards. But that he plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods (as the present quantum theory requires of him) is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one ;unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy?
Courage | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Music | Past | Present | Resignation | Self | Sorrow | Soul | Sympathy | Tenderness | Weakness | Wisdom |
If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time - not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day.
Better | Day | Future | Life | Life | Little | Present | Time | Tomorrow | Wisdom |
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Beware of fatiguing them by ill-judged exactness. If virtue offers itself to the child under a melancholy and constrained aspect, while liberty and license present themselves under an agreeable form, all is lost, and your labor is in vain.
Labor | Liberty | Melancholy | Present | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Child |
It should be the work of a genuine and noble patriotism to raise the life of the nation to the level of its privileges; to harmonize its general practice with its abstract principles; to reduce to actual facts the ideals of its institutions; to elevate instruction into knowledge; to deepen knowledge into wisdom; to render knowledge and wisdom complete in righteousness; and to make the love of country perfect in the love of man.
Abstract | Ideals | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Man | Patriotism | Practice | Principles | Righteousness | Wisdom | Work | Instruction |