This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Worldly riches are like nuts; many clothes are torn in getting them, many a tooth broke in cracking them, but never a belly filled with eating them.
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.
Character | Common Sense | Light | Men | Morality | Nations | Proverbs | Sense | Time | Wise | Wit | Old |
Franklin Pierce Adams, pen name F.P.A.
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.
Experience | People | Time | Wisdom | Trouble |
Joseph Anderson, fully Joseph Inslee Anderson
In the life of a nation ideas are not the only things of value. Sentiment also is of great value; and the way to foster sentiment in a people, and to develop it in the young, is to have a well-recorded past, and to be familiar with it.
Confidence is a thing not to be produced by compulsion. Men cannot be forced into trust.
Character | Confidence | Men | Trust |
Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm
When a person focuses on the goals of his life, he is able to overcome the difficulties involved. When one’s focus is on olam haboh [world-to-come], he lives in a state of happiness even though he experiences many inconveniences along his relatively short trip.
Character | Focus | Goals | Life | Life | World | Happiness |
Awareness of the inevitability of death need not cause sadness. Rather we can use it to destroy the common worries about inconsequential aspects of life. Many worries are over matters that have no lasting value. When you overcome worry, your mind will be free to think of your ultimate goals in life.
Awareness | Cause | Character | Death | Destroy | Goals | Life | Life | Mind | Need | Sadness | Will | Worry | Think |
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
I have known many troubles, but most of them never happened.
People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest. People with interests are never bores!
Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not as many as have fallen by the tongue.
Wisdom |
He never taught any law or practice contrary to the Written Law. Only after his death... many of his disciples introduced practices and doctrines altogether foreign to him, removing thereby the cornerstone of the Law while winning the multitudes.
"Point of view" must mean more than the mere prejudice; it should express conclusions reached by the painful process known as thinking. And when new facts or factors are presented, free men should be as vigilant to change their viewpoints as to confirm them.