This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions (in Pascal’s sense) is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of “choice” when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses.
The light of genius is sometimes so resplendent as to make a man walk through life, amid glory and acclamation; but it burns very dimly and low when carried into “the valley of the shadow of death.” But faith is like the evening star, shining into our souls the more brightly, the deeper is the night of death in which they sink.
Death | Faith | Genius | Glory | Life | Life | Light | Man | Wisdom |
It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.
Good | Reputation | Wisdom |
Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste fore natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.
Childhood | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Men | Progress | Regret | Taste | Time | Wealth | Wisdom | World |
A good reputation is more valuable than money.
Good | Money | Reputation | Wisdom |
The works of a person that builds begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve. In this, planting promises a more lasting pleasure than building; which, were it to remain in equal perfection, would at best begin to moulder and want repairs in imagination. Now trees have a circumstance that suits our taste and that is annual variety.
Imagination | Perfection | Pleasure | Taste | Wisdom | Circumstance |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Lost wealth may be restored by industry, the wreck of health regained by temperance, forgotten knowledge restored by study, alienated friendship smoothed into forgetfulness, even forfeited reputation won by penitence and virtue. But who ever looked upon his vanished hours, recalled his slighted years, stamped them with wisdom, or effaced from Heaven's record the fearful blot of wasted time?
Forgetfulness | Health | Heaven | Industry | Knowledge | Reputation | Study | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth | Wisdom | Friendship |
We do not know either unalloyed happiness or unmitigated misfortune. Everything in this world is a tangled yarn; we taste nothing in its purity; we do not remain two moments in the same state. Our affections as well as bodies, are in a perpetual flux.
Misfortune | Nothing | Purity | Taste | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success.
Action | Chance | Esteem | Life | Life | Reputation | Success | Usefulness | Wisdom |
Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life - it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.
Conscience | Eternity | God | Inheritance | Life | Life | Man | Offense | Reputation | Wisdom | World | God |
Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
Every enthusiast contains a false enthusiast, every lover a false lover, every man of genius a false man of genius, and, as a rule, every fault its counterfeit: this is necessary in order to assure the continuity of one's personality, not only in the eyes of others but in one's own - in order to understand oneself, count upon oneself, think of oneself; in order, in short, to be oneself.
Fault | Genius | Man | Order | Personality | Rule | Wisdom | Fault | Think | Understand |