This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
It is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them. The true way to bear them is to yield ourselves up with confidence to God.
Confidence | Cowardice | God | Love | Man | Self | Self-love | Sensibility | Wisdom |
I develop the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any other that give the air of positiveness to an opinion, but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so: It appear to me or should not think it, so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so, or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit I believe has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinion and persuade men into measures that I have been, time to time, engaged in promoting.
When you lead your sons and daughters in the good way, let your words be tender and caressing, in terms of disciplines that win the heart's assent.
Gersonides, abbreviation of first letters as RalBaG from Levi ben Gerson NULL
By means of rational thought we have reached the opinion that God knows in advance only the possibilities open to a man in his freedom, not the particular decisions he will make.. It is the opinion of our religion that God never changes... and yet we find in the words of the prophets that God does repent over some things... It is impossible to solve this contradiction if we adopt the view that God knows particular things as particulars.
Contradiction | Freedom | God | Man | Means | Opinion | Religion | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Words | God | Thought |
Although music appeals simply to the emotions, and represents no definite images in itself, we are justified in using any language which may serve to convey to others our musical expressions. Words will often pave the way for the more subtle operations of music, and unlock the treasures which sound alone an rifle, and hence the eternal popularity of song.
Emotions | Eternal | Language | Music | Popularity | Sound | Will | Wisdom | Words |
Sir, do not mock our dreamers... Their words become the seeds of freedom.
Crawford Greenewalt, fully Crawford Hallock Greenewalt
Behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the mind of some long individual. An individual whose dreams waken him in the night while others lie contentedly asleep.
Dreams | Human race | Individual | Mind | Race | Wisdom |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble while our hearts are so proud.
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 |
Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much, says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.
Ideas | Language | Little | Man | Observation | Reflection | Sound | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Words | Thought |
So that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any ties between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life. But there still remains one method of avoiding this conclusion, and one source which we have not yet examined.
Events | Life | Life | Meaning | Method | Nature | Power | Sense | Sentiment | Wisdom | Words |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Whatever you attach to the words I am is what you are claiming for yourself... Words are the lasers of human thought... Words, in fact, are random thoughts which have been brought together to become “coherent thought.”
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into the cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend.
Consciousness | Ego | Little | Will | Wisdom |