This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Observe a method in the distribution of your time. Every hour will then know its proper employment, and no time will be lost. Idleness will be shut out at every avenue, and with her that numerous body of vices that make up her train.
If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.
Character | Idleness | Melancholy | Vice |
Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.
Devil | Duty | Idleness | Labor | Sin | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell
When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.
Character | Distrust | Extreme | Knowledge | Man | Men | Reading | Wisdom | World |
The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, hear much, always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as we possibly can; to hearken to what is said, and to answer to the purpose.
Conversation | Distrust | Little | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Wisdom | Wit |
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
They change their sky not their mind who cross the sea. A busy idleness possesses us: we seek a happy life, with ships and carriages: the object of our search is present with us.
Change | Happy | Idleness | Life | Life | Mind | Object | Present | Search | Wisdom |
If at any time all labor should cease, and all existing provision be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive - all would have perished by want of subsistence... Universal idleness would speedily result in universal ruin; and ... useless labor is, in this respect, the same as idleness.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Gentlemen, let us distrust our first reactions; they are invariably much too favorable.