This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded by experience.
Experience | Need | Study |
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
Be not afraid of enthusiasm; you need it; you can do nothing effectually without it.
Enthusiasm | Need | Nothing | Afraid |
Man cannot live without a lasting trust in something indestructible within him, both his trust and its indestructible object can remain forever concealed from him. One expression of this concealment is man's faith in a personal God.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.
Cunning | Little | Man | Memory | Need | Present | Reading | Wit | Writing |
You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.
Friendship consists of a willing ear, an understanding heart and a helping hand.
Heart | Understanding |
He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven.
When a man argues for victory and not for truth, he is sure of just one ally, that is the devil. Not the defeat of intellect, but the acceptance of the heart is the only true object in fighting with the sword of spirit.
Acceptance | Defeat | Devil | Fighting | Heart | Man | Object | Spirit | Truth |
Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
The knowledge of a single fact acquired through a discovery of its causes prepares the mind to understand and ascertain other facts without need of recourse to experiment.
Discovery | Experiment | Knowledge | Mind | Need | Discovery | Understand |
In its deepest sense, the truth is a condition of heart, soul, mind and strength towards God and towards our fellow – not an utterance, not even a right form of words; and therefore such truth coming forth in words is, in a sense, the person that speaks.
God | Heart | Mind | Right | Sense | Soul | Strength | Truth | Words | God |