This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved... as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.
Hypothesis | Mind | Wisdom |
Saint Columbanus, aka Saint Columbanus of Bobbio NULL
What is foreseen by the mind is lighter to bear.
The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places; and men of genius, in their walks at table, and amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the mind inwards, can form an artificial solitude; retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
Art | Folly | Genius | Meditation | Men | Mind | Solitude | Wisdom | Wise | Art |
Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family; a book of condensed thought and striking anecdote, of sound maxims and truthful apothegms. It will impress on your mind a thousand valuable suggestions, and teach your children lessons of truth and duty. Such a book is a casket of jewels for your household.
Apothegms | Children | Duty | Family | Maxims | Mind | Sound | Teach | Thought | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
A knowledge of our existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
Beauty | Existence | Knowledge | Man | Reason | Sense | Wisdom |
Félix Dupanloup, fully Félix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup
No unity can last, in married life, unless the fellowship of hearts is accompanied by the fellowship of minds. As a woman loses the charms of her youth, her husband must perceive that her mind is developing and love must be perpetuated by esteem.
Esteem | Husband | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Unity | Wisdom | Woman | Youth |
Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.
Belief | Contradiction | Error | Health | Mind | Pleasure | Truth | Wisdom | Absurdity |
Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as an inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way.
Change | Duty | Growth | Inconsistency | Knowledge | Mind | Opinion | Progress | Sound | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Thought |
True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience.
Conscience | Mind | Progress | Wisdom |
In the first place, the human mind, no matter how highly trained, is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many tongues. The little child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind to God. And because I believe this, I am not an atheist.
Books | God | Little | Mind | Order | Plan | Universe | Wisdom | Child | Understand |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
The only true knowledge of our fellowman is that which enables us to feel with him - which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.
Heart | Knowledge | Opinion | Wisdom | Circumstance |