This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
Laughter |
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway… You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.
Adventure | Beauty | Challenge | Duty | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Luck | Opportunity | People | Play | Promise | Serenity | Sorrow | Struggle | Tragedy | Will | Friends |
The truth, the hope, of any time must be sought in the minorities. Michael Angelo was the conscience of Italy. We grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now, but in his own day his friends were few.
The glory of Friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship. My friends have come unsought. The great God gave them to me.
Glory | God | Inspiration | Joy | Smile | Trust | Friendship | God | Friends |
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the character which draws them.
Robert Fulghum, fully Robert Lee Fulghum
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge; that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts; that hope always triumphs over experience; that laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe love is stronger than death.
Death | Dreams | Experience | Grief | History | Hope | Imagination | Knowledge | Laughter | Love | Myth |
What is our life but this dance of transient forms? Isn’t everything always changing: the leaves on the trees in the park, the light in your room as you read this, the seasons, the weather, the time of day, the people passing you in the street? And what about us? Doesn’t everything we have done in the past seem like a dream now? The friends we grew up with, the childhood haunts, those views and opinions we once held with such single-minded passion: We have left them all behind.
Childhood | Life | Life | Light | Past | People | Time | Friends |
Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way... Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.
Desire | Friend | Giving | Heart | Love | Man | Nothing | Present | Right | Soul | Worth | Friends | Learn |
It is best to live as friends with those in time with whom we would be to all eternity.
Government exists to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection - they have many friends and few enemies.
Government | Need | Rights | Friends |