This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always behind time.
Business | Confidence | Habit | Man | Nothing | Punctuality | Reputation | Time | Wisdom | Business |
We have lose the habit of thinking quietly, of trying to know ourselves and our friends, and the world around us, and the God who is above and within us. We are looking in the wrong places for happiness. We are so exclusively occupied with material things and with their accumulation that the higher values are crowded out.
You must make a habit of thinking in terms of a definite objective.
Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL
This is what a father ought to be about: helping his son to form the habit of doing right on his own initiative, rather than because he's afraid of some serious consequence.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up, a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallible right.
Habit | Life | Life | Means | Right | System | Training | Will |
Ronald Knox, fully Ronald Arbuthnott Knox
Worldliness is not, in the last analysis, love of possessions, or the habit of courting great personages. It is simply the weakness of fibre which makes us take our standards from the society round us.
To be fruitful in invention, it is indispensable to have a habit of observation and reflection.
Habit | Indispensable | Invention | Observation | Reflection |
Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin
Much of [Winston Churchill’s] strength as a war leader derived from this very habit of myth-making, of surrounding even the ordinary and the humdrum with enchantment. Like Shakespeare’s Glendower, he could “call spirits from the vast deep” – and the British believed in them.
Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
We know tradition as a living social process constantly changing, constantly in need of criticism, but constant also as the continuing memory, value system and habit structure of a society.
Criticism | Habit | Memory | Need | Society | System | Tradition | Value |
[Idolatry as] the moments when we forget who we really are and instead of remembering that we are sparks of the Divine, we start giving up our power to a guru, an ideology, a romantic obsession, a stressful job that begins to define us, or an unhealthy habit we think we can’t live without. Even is we no longer build or worship physical idols like in ancient times, we have modern-day addictions and pressures that cause us to forget that our purpose here is to be a vehicle for Divine energies.
Cause | Day | Giving | Habit | Obsession | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Worship | Think |