This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
Character | Elegance | Heart | Hurry | Luxury | Means | Refinement | Study | Think |
True purity of taste is a quality of the mind; it is a feeling which can, with little difficulty, be acquired by the refinement of intelligence; whereas purity of manners is the result of wise habits, in which all the interests of the soul are mingled and in harmony with the progress of intelligence. That is why the harmony of good taste and of good manners is more common than the existence of taste without manners, or of manners without taste.
Character | Difficulty | Existence | Good | Harmony | Intelligence | Little | Manners | Mind | Progress | Purity | Refinement | Soul | Taste | Wise |
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
Real sorrow is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rays of the one and the wounds of the other.
Too great a display of delicacy can and does sometimes infringe upon decency.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.
Refinement | Wisdom |
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Nothing | Refinement | Science | Thinking | Wisdom |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
It is one proof of a good education, and of true refinement of feeling, to respect antiquity.
Antiquity | Education | Good | Refinement | Respect | Wisdom | Respect |
There exists a continuum of consciousness uniting individual minds that could be directly experienced if the psychophysical threshold of perception were sufficiently lowered through refinement in the functioning nervous system.
Consciousness | Individual | Perception | Refinement | System |
John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
Knowledge is the one thing, virtue another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith.
Conscience | Faith | Good | Humility | Knowledge | Refinement | Sense | Virtue | Virtue |
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. This is to be my symphony.
Elegance | Heart | Hurry | Luxury | Means | Refinement | Study | Think |
Whenever education and refinement grow away from the common people, they are growing toward selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. that is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.
Cultivation | Education | Evil | God | Life | Life | Men | People | Refinement | Selfishness | Sympathy | Work | World |
It is impossible to indulge in habitual severity of opinion upon our fellow-men without injuring the tenderness and delicacy of our own feelings.
Feelings | Men | Opinion | Tenderness |
It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation, all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.
Association | Conversation | Culture | Habit | Mind | Property | Spirit | Association |