This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's-land between honesty and dishonesty.
Character | Dishonesty | Honesty | Land | Little | Man | Public |
For... what liberty is; there can no other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he useth in his mind, that is, what he himself meaneth when he saith an action... is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied... that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they heard, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient, because experience and matter of fact are not verified by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory.
Absence | Action | Argument | Character | Custom | Experience | Liberty | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Reflection | Sense | Will | Words | Think |
Joseph Hall, fully Bishop Joseph Hall
The drowning man snatches at every twig.
War some day will be abolished by the will of man. This assertion does not in any way invalidate the truth that war is fundamentally caused by impersonal, political, economic and social forces. But it is the destiny of man to master and control such force, even as it is his destiny to harness rivers, chain the lightning and ride the storm. It is human will, operating under social forces, that has abolished slavery, infanticide, dueling, and a score of other social enormities. Why should it not do the same for war?
Assertion | Character | Control | Day | Destiny | Force | Man | Slavery | Truth | War | Will | Wisdom |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself. As to the pure all things are pure, even so to the impure all things are impure.
Character | Confidence | Evil | Man |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
God gave every man individuality of constitution, and a chance for achieving individuality of character. He puts special instruments into every man’s hands by which to make himself and achieve his mission.
It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he makes of what he knows; not a question of what he has acquired, but how he has been trained, but of what he is, and what he can do.
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself.