This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
No matter how brilliant our attempts to inform, it is our ability to inspire that will turn the tides.
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell.
You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art... If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the face... We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. We took strong action.
The ability to get to the verge without getting into war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.
Love and kindness are here all the time, somewhere, in fact, everywhere. Usually our ability to touch them and be touched by them lies buried below our own fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds, below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we are truly separate and alone.
Nine-tenths of that which is attributed to sexuality is the works of our magnificent ability to imagine, which is no longer an instinct, but exactly the opposite: a creation.
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatest which does not bow before children.
Children | Philosophy | Wisdom |
Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.
Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
Consider the postage stamp my son: Its usefulness consists in its ability to stick to one thing until it gets there
Ability | Usefulness |
Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
Transcendence is a movement into the unknown, the ability to rise and go beyond limitation and restraint… it is our biological birthright, built into us genetically and blocked by our enculturation.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
The best decision makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain the ability to be decisive.
The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends.
Ability | Capacity | Culture | People | Friendship |
Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The most learned men have told us that only the wise man is free. What is freedom but the ability to live as one will? The man who lives as he wills is none other than the one who strives for the right, who does his duty, who plans his life with forethought, and who obeys the laws because he knows it is good for him, and not out of fear. Everything he says, does, or thinks is spontaneous and free. His tasks and conduct begin and end in himself, because nothing has so much influence over him as his own counsel and decision. Even the supreme power of fortune is submissive to him. The wise poet has reminded us that fortune is molded for each man by the manner of his life. Only the wise man does nothing against his will, or with regret and by compulsion. Thought this truth deserves to be discussed at greater length, it is nevertheless proverbial that no one is free except the wise. Evil men are nothing but slaves.
Ability | Conduct | Counsel | Decision | Duty | Evil | Fear | Forethought | Fortune | Freedom | Good | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Nothing | Power | Regret | Right | Thought | Truth | Will | Wills | Wise | Counsel | Thought |