This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The mischief of flattery is not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honor may be gained without the toil of merit.
Ambition | Flattery | Honor | Influence | Man | Merit | Opinion |
Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?
Change | Culture | Earth | Government | Heaven | Honor | Human race | Life | Life | Peace | People | Race | Rest | Rites |
All new doctrine goes through three stages. It is attacked and declared absurd; then it is admitted as true and obvious but insignificant. Finally, its true importance is recognized and its adversaries claim the honor of having discovered it.
Respect is not carried in great, bold proclamations, but in small moments of surprising intimacy and empathy.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Duty |
Prayer is likely to be undervalued by all but wise people because it is silent and so secret. We are often deceived into thinking that noise is more important than silence. War sounds far more important than the noisesless growing of a crop of what, yet the silent wheat feeds millions, while war destroys them. Nobody but God knows how often prayers have changed the course of history... The highest communion is not asking God for things for ourselves, but letting Him flow down through us, out over the world - in endless benediction.
God | History | Important | Noise | People | Prayer | Silence | Thinking | War | Wise | World | God |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.’
It is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it – that we demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency in what is impracticable.
Action | Duty | Ends | Loyalty | Loyalty | Men | Motives | Policy | Principles | Public |
Whoever believes in God and the hereafter should not injure his neighbor and should honor his guest.
Robert M. Linder, fully Robert Mitchell Linder
Supported by the authority of all institutions, parenthood has come to amount to little more than a campaign against individuality. Every father and every mother trembles lest an offspring, in act or thought, should be different from his fellows; and the smallest display of uniqueness in a child becomes the signal for the application of drastic measures aimed at stamping out that small fire of noncompliance by which personal distinctness is expressed. In an atmosphere of anxiety, in a climate of apprehension, the parental conspiracy against children is planned.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Authority | Children | Conspiracy | Display | Father | Individuality | Little | Mother | Thought | Child |
Everything is small at the beginning and then increases, except trouble, which is great at its beginning and then decreases.