This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The goal of wisdom is laughter and play - not the kind that one sees in little children who do not yet have the faculty of reason, but the kind that is developed in those who have grown mature through both time and understanding. If someone has experienced the wisdom that can only be heard from oneself, learned from oneself, and created from oneself, he does not merely participate in laughter: he becomes laughter itself.
Character | Children | Laughter | Little | Play | Reason | Time | Understanding | Wisdom |
Who train themselves in wisdom cultivate true courage.
Learning, if rightly applied, makes a young man thinking, attentive, industrious, confident and wary; and an old man cheerful and useful. It is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, an entertainment at all times; it cheers in solitude, and gives moderation and wisdom in all circumstances.
Adversity | Character | Circumstances | Entertainment | Learning | Man | Moderation | Prosperity | Solitude | Thinking | Wisdom | Moderation | Old |
The world is governed by three things - wisdom, authority, and appearance. Wisdom for thoughtful people, authority for rough people, and appearances for the great mass of superficial people who can look only at the outside.
Appearance | Authority | Character | People | Wisdom | World |
When you love you are not wise: when you are wise you do not love.
The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber. If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fools furnace.
Beauty | Character | Heart | Man | Paradise | Soul | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wise | Beauty | Thought | Vice |
True purity of taste is a quality of the mind; it is a feeling which can, with little difficulty, be acquired by the refinement of intelligence; whereas purity of manners is the result of wise habits, in which all the interests of the soul are mingled and in harmony with the progress of intelligence. That is why the harmony of good taste and of good manners is more common than the existence of taste without manners, or of manners without taste.
Character | Difficulty | Existence | Good | Harmony | Intelligence | Little | Manners | Mind | Progress | Purity | Refinement | Soul | Taste | Wise |
Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart’s paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul’s purgatory. It is the wise man’s bonfire, and the fool’s furnace.
Beauty | Character | Heart | Love | Man | Paradise | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Wise | Beauty | Vice |
May those who represent advanced views bear in mind that true wisdom is always joined with mildness, that malice never converts the erring but strengthens him in his attitude, and that it is very unfitting to combat error (so long as this does not assume the aspect of injustice) with the weapons of hatred.
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skilled direct it.