This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Good | Integrity | Intelligence | Sense | Taste |
We live truly in our radiations. We grow and develop in proportion as we help others to grow and develop.
Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
Man |
In giving, a man receives more than he gives, and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without [let alone]. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Man |
We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.
True sympathy is putting ourselves in another’s place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination.
Imagination | Reality | Sympathy |
There is no likeness or proportion between life, however painful, and death; and therefore there is no equality between the crime of murder and the retaliation of it but what is judicially accomplished by the execution of the criminal. His death, however, must be kept free from all maltreatment that would make the humanity suffering in his person loathsome or abominable.
Crime | Death | Equality | Humanity | Life | Life | Murder | Retaliation | Suffering | Murder |
The proportion of those who think is extremely small; yet every individual flatters himself that he is one of the number.
Individual | Think |
Whoever is wise is apt to suspect and be diffident of himself, and upon that account is willing to “hearken unto counsel”; whereas the foolish man, being in proportion to his folly full of himself, and swallowed up in conceit, will seldom take any counsel but his own, and for that very reason, because it is his own.
Virtue cannot be fully attained without liberty and the absence of liberty proves that virtue in its full protection is wanting. Therefore a man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues, and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish.
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the Great Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness... Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
Creed | Ends | Freedom | Pain | Pleasure | Right | Wrong | Happiness |
Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
Art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas, and I call an idea great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received.
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to is dependency of language and expression.
In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others.
There are two types of justice: retributive justice and distributive justice. Retributive justice requires punishment for wrongdoing in proportion to the magnitude of the crime... Distributive justice refers to the fair distribution of benefits and burdens in a society.
Crime | Justice | Punishment | Society |
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world. Labour not only produces commodities. It also produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and indeed in the same proportion as it produces commodities in general.
Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are generally stubborn just in proportion as they are ignorant and wrong.