This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness. Man and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocket-book than to suffer from a poor soul.
Beauty | Better | Man | Money | Poverty | Soul | Wisdom | World |
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with true greatness, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good.
Good | Greatness | Pain | Rest | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?
Frederic Eggleston, fully Sir Frederic William Eggleston
The great task of peace is to work morals into it. The only sort of peace that will be real is one in which everybody takes his share or responsibility. World organizations and conferences will be of no value unless there is improvement in the relation of men to men.
Improvement | Men | Peace | Responsibility | Will | Wisdom | Work | World | Value |
Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.
Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell
When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.
Character | Distrust | Extreme | Knowledge | Man | Men | Reading | Wisdom | World |
The hold which comptrollers of money are able to maintain on productive forces is seen to be more powerful when it is remembered that, although money is supposed to represent the real wealth of the world, there is always much more wealth that there is money, and real wealth is often compelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that most paradoxical situation - a world filled with wealth but suffering want.
Randolph S. Foster, fully Randolph Sinks Foster
Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcome us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly they wait to bid us welcome.
The majority of people are naturally straddlers. They are not in the world to pioneer but to be as happy as possible. If pioneering in a cause brings discomfort, they would rather not be among the pioneers. they would rather stand on the sidelines and, in the combat between truth and error, wait and see which proves the stronger. Though they may have a lazy faith that truth at last will win, they do not wish to lend a premature support.
Cause | Error | Faith | Happy | Majority | People | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
If I were called upon to choose between beauty and truth, I should not hesitate; I should hold to beauty, being confident that it bears within it truth both higher and deeper than truth itself. I will go so far as to say there is nothing true in the world save beauty.
All children talk with integrity up to about the age of five, when they fall victim to the influences of the adult world and mass entertainment. It is then that they begin, all unconsciously, to become plausible actors. The product of this process is known as maturity, or you and me.
Age | Children | Entertainment | Integrity | Wisdom | World | Victim |
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them.
Wisdom | Words | World | Understand |