This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.
Cause | Example | Mother | Truth | Wisdom | Witness | Instruction |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.
Wisdom |
You have removed most of the road blocks to success when you have learned the difference between motion and direction.
Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Family | Lying | Merit | People | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.
Attention | Good | Impression | Memory | Wisdom |
To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.
Enthusiasm | Teach | Wisdom |
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 |
It makes small difference to the dead if they are buried as tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.
A. H. R. Fairchild, fully Arthur Henry Rolph Fairchild
The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.
Ability | Calmness | Culture | Day | Flexibility | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Openness | Problems | Question | Self | Sympathy | Wisdom | Flexibility |