This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whoever is wise is apt to suspect and be diffident of himself, and upon that account is willing to “hearken unto counsel”; whereas the foolish man, being in proportion to his folly full of himself, and swallowed up in conceit, will seldom take any counsel but his own, and for that very reason, because it is his own.
You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the road side until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable.
Beauty | Conversation | Folly | Good | Impertinence | Light | Nature | Virtue | Virtue | Wit |
Nothing can exceed the vanity of our existence but the folly of our pursuits.
One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom, another's folly as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in his duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself, which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? The debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature?
Beauty | Debt | Duty | Folly | Genius | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Man | Mankind | Money | Nature | Thought | Wisdom | Beauty | Thought |
Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, Know what thou canst work at.
Folly | Know thyself | Precept | Spirit | Work |
The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance.
Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities owe possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.
Affectation | Appearance | Distinction | Envy | Folly | Infamy | Passion | Pride | Qualities | Superiority | Think | Vice |
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all; when it first appears we can at least prevent its further growth. But do not on this account waste your breath on empty arguments to prove to the youth that he is like other men and subject to the same weaknesses. Make him feel it or he will never know it.
The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning and when they cannot it's a sign our knowledge of them is very small and confus'd and when a Mathematical Reasoning can be had it's as great a folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark, when you have a Candle standing by you.
Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.
Folly |
Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.
Absolute | Folly | People | Power | Right | Rule | Trust | Think |
It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)... despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.