This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John W. Daniel, fully John Warwick Daniel
Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us - a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech - the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling, lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime.
Attention | Character | Charity | Conduct | Crime | Difficulty | Diplomacy | Events | Giving | Intrigue | Life | Life | Means | Men | Mystery | Order | Power | Providence | Purity | Selfishness | Service | Speech | Tact | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise |
Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas
Everybody had talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.
Difficulty | Wisdom | Talent |
Nothing is so often irrevocably neglected as an opportunity of daily occurrence.
Nothing | Opportunity | Wisdom |
One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.
Failure | Opportunity | Wisdom | Failure |
A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often he has no opportunity to exercise judgment.
Circumstances | Control | Judgment | Man | Opportunity | Surplus | Wisdom |
Failure is only opportunity to more intelligently begin again.
Failure | Opportunity | Wisdom |
One must remember that practically all of us have a number of significant learning disabilities. For example, I am grossly unmusical and cannot carry a tune. We happen to live in a society in which the child who has trouble learning to read is in difficulty. Yet we have all seen dyslexic children who have either superior visual-perception or visual-motor skills. My suspicion would be that in an illiterate society such a child would be in little difficulty and might in fact do better because of his superior visual-perception talents, while many of us who function here might do poorly in a society in which a quite different array of talents was needed in order to be successful. As the demands of society change will we acquire a new group of "minimally brain damaged?"
Better | Change | Children | Difficulty | Example | Learning | Little | Order | Perception | Society | Suspicion | Will | Wisdom | Society | Trouble | Child |
Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
Politicians... rise predominantly from... the "lower middle class"; most are self-made men... ; most depend on their political jobs for their livelihood and most have little time, inclination, or opportunity for adult education; hence the dominating qualities of so many are greed, vulgarity, attention to special interest, avarice, and selfishness.
Attention | Avarice | Education | Greed | Inclination | Little | Men | Opportunity | Qualities | Self | Selfishness | Time | Vulgarity | Wisdom |
John Hersey, fully John Richard Hersey
Journalism allows it's readers to witness history. Fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
History | Opportunity | Wisdom | Witness |
I had a "near death experience" and remember thinking, "If only people knew what it was like to die, they wouldn't be afraid." I reached a point at which a voice began to ask me if I thought I'd completed what I'd come to do. was I going to leave my son, then age three, behind? There was no sense of threat or coercion. An absolute acceptance that whatever I did was all right, but pointing out that the moment of choice was now. The relief and release from the fear of dying changed my life. The reminder that "I am not my body" freed me to live my life in a different way. The understanding that no matter what is going on in our bodies, the essence of who we are is unaffected; this wisdom has enabled me to help other see their bodies in a different way. To see the body in illness not as an enemy, but as a faithful fried, programmed by; the soul to react in that exact way. To see illness as a confrontation in the physical of what one is reluctant to confront on the mental or emotional levels. In other words, a message, a communication, a time to listen and therefore a unique and powerful opportunity for transformation.
Absolute | Acceptance | Age | Body | Choice | Coercion | Death | Enemy | Experience | Fear | Life | Life | Opportunity | People | Right | Sense | Soul | Thinking | Thought | Time | Understanding | Unique | Wisdom | Words | Thought |
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed.
Opportunity | Unique | Wisdom |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.
Opportunity | Wisdom |
Being 'awake in your dreams' provides the opportunity for unique and compelling adventures rarely surpassed elsewhere in life... [As a skill] it has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem-solving, and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery.
Confidence | Dreams | Growth | Health | Life | Life | Opportunity | Progress | Self | Self-confidence | Self-mastery | Skill | Unique | Wisdom |
Thought is not sacred, thought is a material process. This is where our difficulty lies. Thought is a movement in time.
Knowledge is acquired by study and observation, but wisdom cometh by opportunity of leisure; the ripest thought comes from the mind which is not always on the stretch, but fed, at times, by a wise passiveness.
Knowledge | Leisure | Mind | Observation | Opportunity | Study | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Thought |
F. D. Maurice, fully John Frederick Denison "F.D." Maurice
In a discussion the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.
Difficulty | Discussion | Opinion | Wisdom |
Marriage is an opportunity for happiness, not a gift. It is a step bay which two imperfect individuals unite their forces in the struggle for happiness.
Marriage | Opportunity | Struggle | Wisdom |