This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
A brilliant achievement may win for you the favor of a people at one stroke; but to earn the love and respect of the population that surrounds you, a long succession of little services rendered and of obscure good deeds, a constant habit of kindness and an established reputation for disinterestedness will be required.
Achievement | Deeds | Good | Habit | Kindness | Little | Love | People | Reputation | Respect | Will | Respect |
Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom
Any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, has disappeared. Leisure (has become) entertainment.
Capacity | Entertainment | Leisure | Life | Life | Men | Taste |
Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters and musicians.
Aesthetic | Art | Genius | Learning | Little | Respect | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Genius |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. but when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The emergence of a superman or a great mystic or a genius or a superior personality inevitably precipitates a social conflict. The conflict will be more or less acute, according to the degree in which the creative individual happens to rise above the average level of his former kin and kind. But some conflict is inevitable, since the social equilibrium which the genius has upset by the mere fact of his personal emergence has eventually to be restored either by his social triumph or by his social defeat.
Defeat | Genius | Individual | Inevitable | Personality | Will |
An idiot repeats his mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes. But a genius learns from the mistakes of others.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.
Genius | Mediocrity |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm | Genius |
A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity.
Integrity | Reputation |
To pity the unhappy is not contrary to selfish desire; on the other hand, we are glad of the occupation to thus testify friendship and attract to ourselves the reputation of tenderness, without giving anything.
Desire | Giving | Occupation | Pity | Reputation | Tenderness | Friendship |
To sentence a man of true genius to the drudgery of a school is put a racehorse in a mill.
The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.
Calamity | Death | Disease | Good | Grave | Health | Malice | Misfortune | Nothing | Property | Reputation | Respect | Riches | World | Riches | Respect | Friends |
To be a genius is to achieve complete possession of one's own experience, body, rhythm, and memories.
Body | Experience | Genius |