This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Real merit of any kind cannot long be concealed; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it, but a man’s exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ought; but it will always be known.
It is not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily time-worn yoke of their opinions.
Friend | Genius | Mediocrity | Men | Race | Reading | Solitude | Time | Will | Writing |
All things are engaged in writing their history... Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where molt the wings which bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of their men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time worn yoke of their opinions.
Friend | Genius | Mediocrity | Men | Race | Reading | Solitude | Time | Writing |
Perpetual moderness is the measure of merit in every work of art.
Sholem Asch, born Szalom Asz, also written Shalom Asch
It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.
Writing |
He who shares the afflictions of others will merit to behold the comforting of humanity.
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.
Man | Merit | Novelty | Originality | Sincerity |
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; no more; and, by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?
Calamity | Death | Delay | Dread | Dreams | Fortune | Law | Life | Life | Love | Man | Merit | Mind | Mortal | Office | Question | Respect | Time | Troubles | Will | Wrong | Respect | Calamity |
Reputation is... oft got without merit and lost without deserving.
Merit | Reputation |
If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that rolled under the radiator, striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of each day.
Day | Happy | Life | Life | Man | Will | Writing | Happiness |
If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day. If you live only for yourself you are always an immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellowmen. If your ambition has the momentum of an express train at full speed, if you can no longer stop your mad rush for glory, power, or intellectual supremacy, try to divert your energies into socially useful channels before it is too late. For those who seek the larger happiness and greater effectiveness open to human beings there can be but one philosophy of life, a philosophy of constructive altruism. The truly happy man is always a fighting optimist. Optimism includes not only altruism but also social responsibility, social courage and objectivity. The good life demands a working philosophy as an orientating map of conduct. This is the golden way of life. This is the satisfying life. This is the way to be happy though human.
Altruism | Ambition | Courage | Danger | Day | Death | Ego | Fighting | Gold | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Optimism | Philosophy | Service | Will | Writing | Ambition | Danger | Happiness |
Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
Magnanimity | Merit |
To be an object of hatred and aversion to their contemporaries has been the usual fate of all those whose merit has raised them above the common level. The man who submits to the shafts of envy for the sake of noble objects pursues a judicious course for his own lasting fame. Hatred dies with its object, while merit soon breaks forth in full splendor, and his glory is handed down to posterity in never-dying strains.
Envy | Fame | Fate | Glory | Man | Merit | Object | Posterity | Fate |
Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.
Merit |
F. L. Lucas, fully Frank Laurence "F. L." Lucas
And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.