This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things - their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what to say we know not.
Good | Improvement | Men | Opinion | Talking |
The man who lives by himself and for himself is likely to be corrupted by the company he keeps.
Man |
Most people judge others either by the company they keep, or by their fortune.
Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his sentiments and in understanding what is proposed to him; it is therefore good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company of the better sort.
Better | Discretion | Good | Man | Understanding |
The company in which you will improve most will be least expensive to you.
Will |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Enough |
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
No company is preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.
Conversation | Think |
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
Trouble, difficulty and hardship are three great teachers. Fortunate is the person who in keeping company with them keeps his eyes, his ears and, better still, his mind open; they can teach him valuable things.
Better | Difficulty | Mind | Teach | Hardship |
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.
There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; there is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite love the benefit.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves.
Business | Leisure | Men | Mother | Riches | Solitude | Thought |
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
This I always religiously observed, as a rule, never to chide my husband before company nor to prattle abroad of miscarriages at home. What passes between two people is much easier made up than when once it has taken air.
Why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists solely to make money. Money is an important part of a company's existence, if the company is any good. But a result is not a cause. We have to go deeper and find the real reason for our being.
Cause | Existence | Good | Important | Money | People | Reason | Think |
Brave and loyal followers! Long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone other than God Himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind. The time has now come that bids us prove our determination by our deeds we have never submitted to slavery, even when it brought no danger with it. We must not choose slavery now, and with it penalties that will mean the end of everything if we fall alive into the hands of the Romans God has given us this privilege, that we can die nobly and as free men and leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children.
Danger | Deeds | Determination | God | Lord | Men | Slavery | Time | Will | World | Deeds | Danger | God |