This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The exercise of criticism always destroys for a time our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of construction. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art.
Art | Beauty | Criticism | Nature | Regard | Sensibility | Time | Wisdom | Work | Beauty |
Hebrew has but one word - Avoda - for work and worship.
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley
Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.
Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |
Max Beerbohm, fully Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
The thought that is beautiful is the thought to cherish. The word that is beautiful is worthy to ensure. The act that is beautiful is eternally and always true and right. Only be aware that your appreciation of beauty is just and true; and to that end, I urge you to live intimately with beauty of the highest type, until it has become a part of you , until you have within you that fineness, that order, that calm, which puts you in tune with the finest things of the universe, and which links you with that spirit that is the enduring life of the world.
Appreciation | Beauty | Life | Life | Order | Right | Spirit | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | World | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
Tolerance of opinions which are thought to be innocuous is as easy, as acts of charity that entail no sacrifice. But the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members. The argument for such tolerance must be made on the ground that it is useful to the society... that free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies.
Argument | Better | Charity | Majority | Sacrifice | Society | Thought | Wisdom | Society | Thought |
The fact remains that the overwhelming majority of people who have become wealthy have become so thanks to work they found profoundly absorbing. The long term study of people who eventually became wealthy clearly reveals that their "luck" arose from accidental dedication they had to an arena they enjoyed.
Dedication | Luck | Majority | People | Study | Wisdom | Work |
If the memory is more flexible in childhood, it is more tenacious in mature age; if childhood has sometimes the memory of words, old age has that of things, which impress themselves according tot he clearness of the conception of the thought which we wish to retain.
Age | Childhood | Memory | Old age | Thought | Wisdom | Words | Old | Thought |
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence.
Action | Example | Habit | Influence | Reason | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
W. Lambert Brittain, fully William Lambert Brittain
If it were possible for children to develop without any interference from the outside world, no special stimulation for their creative work would be necessary. Every child would use his deeply rooted creative impulses without inhibition, confident.