This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Remove the chance to fail and we shall miss one of the best means of developing character.
François Arago, fully François Jean Dominique Arago
A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.
Comfort | Common Sense | Estimation | Genius | Mankind | Peace | People | Rank | Reason | Science | Sense | Time | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Active natures are rarely melancholy. Activity and sadness are incompatible.
Melancholy | Sadness | Wisdom |
There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence.
Beauty | Comfort | Energy | Eternal | Excellence | God | Health | Joy | Laughter | Light | Pain | Passion | Riches | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | World | Riches | Hardship | Beauty |
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
If chance is defined as an event produced by random motion without any causal nexus, I would say there is no such thing as chance.
John Bowring, fully Sir John Bowring
He that studies to know duty, and labors in all things to do it, will have two heavens - one of joy, peace and comfort on earth, and the other of glory and happiness beyond the grave.
Comfort | Duty | Earth | Glory | Grave | Joy | Peace | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Susanna Centlivre, born Susanna Freeman, aka Susanna Carroll
'Tis some comfort to have a companion in our sufferings.
The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.
Charlie Chaplin, formally Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin
Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.
It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent ore the cause of any event; but they signify merely men’s ignorance of the real and immediate cause.
Accident | Cause | Chance | Ignorance | Men | Nature | Reason | Wisdom | Words |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.
The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different - to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.
Body | Chance | Effort | Mind | Opportunity | Spirit | Unique | Wisdom | Child |
S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
It is the individual who knows how little he knows about himself who stands a chance of finding something about himself before he dies.
Chance | Individual | Little | Wisdom |