This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Alexander Hammerton, fully Sir John Alexander Hammerton
One of the most melancholy things in the world is the enormous power for evil of the dead over things living. There is hardly a great painter or writer, or a man who had achieved greatness in any direction, whose name has not been used to repress rising genius.
Evil | Genius | Greatness | Man | Melancholy | Power | Wisdom | World |
The man who gives up accomplishes nothing and is only a hindrance. The man who does not give up can move mountains.
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power which, if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or a Shakespeare.
Imagination | Man | Men | Power | Wisdom |
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
I once counseled a man in despair to do what I myself did in a similar circumstances: to live for short terms. Come, I said to myself at that time, at any rate you can bear it for a quarter of an hour.
Circumstances | Despair | Man | Time | Wisdom |
The practical man is the adventurer, the investigator, the believer in research, the asker of questions, the man who refuses to believe that perfection has been attained... There is no thrill or joy in merely doing that which any one can do... It is always safe to assume, not that the old way is wrong, but that there may be a better way.
Better | Joy | Man | Perfection | Research | Safe | Wisdom | Wrong | Old |
There is nothing in man that must be held in check as the imagination - the most mobile and most dangerous of all our capacities.
Imagination | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |
Edmund (Louis Antoine Huot) de Goncourt (1822-1896) and Jules (Alfred Huot) de Goncourt
Sickness sensitizes man for observation, like a photographic plate.
Man | Observation | Wisdom |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
The ideal society would enable every man and woman to develop along their individual lines, and not attempt to force all into one mould, however admirable.
Force | Individual | Man | Society | Wisdom | Woman | Society |
Frank Gruber, pseudonumns include Stephen Ace, Charles K. Boston & John K. Vedder
It's just as easy to love a wealthy man as a poor one. And it is a lot easier to marry him.
Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give.
Commerce | Earth | Faith | Happy | Man | Peace | Prosperity | Security | Society | Wisdom | Society | Commerce |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.
Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |
Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"
When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry.
Matter never becomes evil except when it is forced to conspire in secret against the usurpations of spirit.
Victor G. Heiser, fully Victor George Heiser
As knowledge with regard to the effects of food upon man increases, it is more than conceivable that the races that first avail themselves of the new values of nutrition may decrease the handicaps of disease, lengthen their lives, and so become the leaders of the future.
There is no evil in human affairs that has not some good mingled with it.