This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We do not honor the fathers by going back to the place where they stopped but by going on toward the things their vision foresaw.
What is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in time exactly as - we read - it is folded about what is in place and in number.
Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes only of a religious stock - from consciousness of obligation and dependence upon God.
Character | Consciousness | Dependence | God | Indispensable | Obligation | Self | Self-denial | Wisdom |
William Osler, fully Sir William Osler
Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place . . . The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look — these the patient understands.
Care | Disease | Individual | Wisdom |
The acceptance of truth that joy and sorrow, laughter and tears are not confined to any particular time, place or people, but are universally distributed, should make us more tolerant of and more interested in the lives of others.
Acceptance | Joy | Laughter | People | Sorrow | Tears | Time | Truth | Wisdom |
High theory and mere mind-stimulation are secondary; living itself - in the real world, among people - is the essence... I hereby promise to attempt to be a mensh, a decent, caring human being. Neutrality, noncommitment, indifference have no place in life. To be fully human, we are committed to being caring, sensitive, aggressively compassionate people. Our lives are defined by how we act. We are alive because we perform just and righteous deeds, deeds of gentle loving kindness.
Deeds | Indifference | Kindness | Life | Life | Mind | Neutrality | People | Promise | Wisdom | World | Deeds |
George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
Thought engenders thought. Place one idea upon paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page. You cannot fathom your mind. It is a well of thought which has no bottom. The more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful will it be. If you neglect to think yourself, and use other people's thoughts, giving them utterance only, you will never know what you are capable of. At first your ideas may come out in lumps, homely and shapeless; but no matter; time and perseverance will arrange and polish them. Learn to think, and you will learn to write; the more you think, the better you will express your ideas.
Better | Giving | Ideas | Mind | Neglect | People | Perseverance | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom | Learn | Think | Thought |
To feel oppressed by obligation is only to prove that we are incapable of a proper sentiment of gratitude. To receive favors from the unworthy is to admit that our selfishness is superior to our pride.
Gratitude | Obligation | Pride | Receive | Selfishness | Sentiment | Wisdom |
Lincoln Steffens, fully Joseph Lincoln Steffens
A child awakened out of a deep sleep, expressed all the crying babies and all the weeping idealists in the world. "Oh, dear," he said, "I have lost my place in my dream."
To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good in themselves, and capable of good use. But to overvalue riches, to give them a place in the heart, which God did not design them to fill, this is covetousness.
Design | God | Good | Heart | Riches | Wisdom | Riches | God | Value |