This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It was said of one of the most intelligent men who ever lived in New England, that when asked how he came to know so much about everything, he replied, by constantly realizing my own ignorance, and never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions.
Be sure to find a place for intellectual and cultural interests outside your daily occupation. It is necessary that you do so if this business of living is not to turn to dust and ashes in your mouth. Moreover, do not overlook the claims of religion as the explanation of an otherwise unintelligible world. It is not the fast tempo of modern life that kills but the boredom, a lack of strong interest and failure to grow that destroy. It is the feeling that nothing is worth while that makes men ill and unhappy.
Business | Destroy | Failure | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Occupation | Religion | Wisdom | World | Worth | Failure | Business |
How do drugs, hygiene, and animal magnetism heal? It may be affirmed that they do not heal, but only relieve suffering temporarily, exchanging one disease for another.
The only rational way of educating is to be an example - if one can't help it, a warning example.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Awe | Curiosity | Day | Enough | Eternity | Important | Life | Life | Little | Mystery | Reality | Reason | Wisdom |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
Maurice Duhamel, pen name of Maurice Bourgeaux
An Arab folk tale relates that Pestilence once met a caravan upon the desert way to Baghdad. "Why," asked the Arab chief, "must you hasten to Baghdad?" "To take five thousand lives." Pestilence replied. Upon the way back to the City of the Caliphs, Pestilence and the caravan met again. "You deceived me," the chief said angrily. "instead of five thousand lives you took fifty thousand." "Nay," said Pestilence. "Five thousand and not one more. It was Fear who killed the rest."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for the crime.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
With love one can live even without happiness.
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.
Existence | Knowledge | Man | Meaning | Mind | Reality | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find something that all would believe and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity form the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, “Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!”
Beginning | Dispute | Humanity | Kill | Man | Men | Nothing | Time | Will | Wisdom | Worship |
Georges Duhamel, Pen name Denis Thevenin
Great ideas have such radiant strength. They cross space and time like avalanches: they carry along with them whatever they touch. They are the only riches that one shares without ever dividing them.
Ideas | Riches | Space | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Riches |