This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Farmers now are members of a capital-intensive industry that values good bookwork more than backwork. so several times a year almost every farmer must seek operating credit from the college fellow in the white shirt and tie - in effect, asking financial permission to work hard on his own land.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Three things we should keep in mind [in conversation]: first, that we speak in the presence of people as vain as ourselves, whose vanity suffers in proportion as ours is satisfied; second, that there are few truths important enough to justify paining and reproving others for not knowing them; finally, that any man who monopolizes the conversation is a fool or would be fortunate if he were one.
Conversation | Enough | Important | Justify | Knowing | Man | Mind | People | Wisdom | Truths |
Equality is one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler - a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
Age | Grave | Presumption | Wisdom |
Business is founded on vision and confidence; success on industry and cooperation.
Business | Confidence | Cooperation | Industry | Success | Vision | Wisdom |
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency... Assiduity... will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.
Dependence | Genius | Industry | Will | Wisdom |
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.
Man | Understanding | Wants | Wisdom |
A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man - his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his care.
Care | Day | Good | Heaven | Industry | Innocence | Man | Music | Wealth | Wife | Wisdom |
Intellect and industry are never incompatible. There is more wisdom, and will be more benefit, in combining them than scholars like to believe, or than the common world imagine; life has time enough for both, and its happiness will be increased by the union.
Enough | Industry | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Ignorance, poverty, and vanity make many soldiers.
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
Good | Government | Improvement | Industry | Labor | Men | Wise |
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
Conscience | Cowardice | Position | Question | Right | Safe | Time |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Throw away holiness and wisdom and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit, and there won’t be any thieves.
Industry | Justice | Morality | People | Right | Will | Wisdom |