This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.
Character | Experience | Wisdom | Words |
There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever.
Character | Consciousness | Duty | Evil | Sense |
There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest wisdom within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.
Whose works exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; whose wisdom exceeds his works, his wisdom shall perish.
Wisdom |
Hermalaus Barbarus, also Ermalao or Hermalao Barbaro
Fortunately wise is he who gains wisdom from another's mishap.
George Washington Barrow or Barrows
An hour's industry will do more to produce cheerfulness, suppress evil humors, and retrieve one's affairs, that a month's moaning. It sweetens enjoyment, and seasons our attainments with a delightful relish.
Cheerfulness | Enjoyment | Evil | Industry | Will | Wisdom |
Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression.
Age | Childhood | Courage | Extreme | Ignorance | Man | Men | Nothing | Old age | Oppression | Will | Wisdom | Old |
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason, and Energy, Love and hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
Energy | Evil | Existence | Good | Hate | Heaven | Hell | Love | Reason | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
It is not wisdom but ignorance that teaches men presumption. Genius may sometimes be arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as knowledge.
Genius | Ignorance | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Presumption | Wisdom |
Much has been said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.
Action | Age | Danger | Difficulty | Mankind | Old age | Power | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Wise | Old |
Those who, without knowing us, think or speak evil of us, do no harm; it is not us they attack, but the phantom of their own imagination.