This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Surely the shortest commencement address in history - and for me one of the most memorable - was that of Dr. Harold E. Hyde, President of New Hampshire's Plymouth State College. He reduced his message to the graduating class to these three ideals: 'Know yourself - Socrates. Control yourself - Cicero; Give yourself - Christ'
Ride your emotions as a scallop rides the waves; don't get upset among them. There are people who enjoy getting swamped emotionally just as, incredibly, there are people who enjoy getting drunk.
Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.
Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |
Congress is a very unrepresentative institution. Not only from an economic class point of view, but from every point of view - sex, race, age, vocation... These men in Congress don’t represent a homogeneous point of view. They represent their own point of view - by reason of their sex, background and class.
The grandest operations, both in nature and in grace, are the most silent and imperceptible. The shallow brook babbles in its passage, and is heard by every one; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen. The storm rages and alarms, but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and the very life of large portions of the earth. And these are pictures of the operations of the grace in the church and in the soul.
Church | Earth | Fury | Grace | Life | Life | Nature | Soul | Wisdom |
Any class is all right if it will only let others be so.
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.
Atheism | Beauty | Fidelity | Hope | Men | Mother | People | Religion | Sensibility | Wisdom | Woman | Beauty |
Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.
It is one of the ironic and yet pathetic aspects of our competitive life that with each step up the ladder of success, the regimentation of the individual and his family becomes more intense and coercive. The goal of competitive striving is to be allowed to submit to these extractions and find fulfillment only in doing as faithfully as possible what others in one's competitive class are doing
Family | Fulfillment | Individual | Life | Life | Success | Wisdom |
There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured.
Selfishness does not grow in intensity as we move downward in society from class to class.
Selfishness | Society | Wisdom | Society |
There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.
People are afraid to think, or they don't know how. They fail to realize that, while emotions can't be surpressed, the mind can be strengthened. All over the world people are seeking peace of mind, but there can be no peace of mind without strength of mind.
Emotions | Mind | Peace | People | Strength | Wisdom | World | Afraid |