This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
Difficulty | Glory | Reputation |
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Good | Integrity | Intelligence | Sense | Taste |
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature.
Art | Effort | Emotions | Nature | Power | Study | Taste | Art |
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
People | Reputation | Thinking | Think |
Escaping with your reputation is better than escaping with your property.
Better | Property | Reputation |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Live each season as it passes; breath the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Taste |
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
Reputation is sometimes as wide as the horizon, when character is but the point of a needle. Character is what one really is; reputation what others believe him to be.
Character | Reputation |
A man's character is the reality of himself. His reputation is the opinion others have formed of him. Character is in him; reputation is from other people - that is the substance, this is the shadow.
A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune.
Fortune | Good | Judgment | Reputation | Truth |
If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which anyone is to be forced to recognizes anything as beautiful... The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept... There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concept what is beautiful.
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.
Appearance | Genius | Reputation | Taste |
Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the boundless multiplicity of possible forms accordant with the given concept, to whose bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rises aesthetically to ideas.
Example | Freedom | Genius | Giving | Ideas | Mind | Poetry | Rank | Thought | Wealth | Thought |
There are two ways of establishing your reputation - to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will be invariably accompanied by the latter.
Men | Reputation | Will |
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Genius | Moderation | Wisdom |
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
Conduct | Reputation |
John Ciardi, fully John Anthony Ciardi
Intelligence recognizes what happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.
Genius | Intelligence | Will |