This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing that has ever been thought and said with a clear mind and pure ethical strength is totally in vain; even if it comes from a weak hand and is imperfectly formed, it inspires the ethical spirit to constantly renewed creation.
Defeat | Heart | Superiority |
Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White
It was like walking through a field playing a brass tuba the day it rained gold. Everything was sitting around waiting to be reported.
Politics |
I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.
Balance | Influence | Mob | Moderation | Rest | Rule | Safe | Wise | Moderation | Think | Understand |
The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.
Conservation | Defeat | Efficiency | Government | Knowledge | Problems | Public | Regret | Government |
No foreign policy-no matter how ingenious-has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of few and carried in the hearts of many.
Business | Care | Competence | Debt | Defeat | Destiny | Effort | Energy | Honor | Industry | Law | Men | Nations | Nothing | Policy | Power | Prosperity | Struggle | Wealth | Will | Business |
Throughout our history the success of the homemaker has been but another name for the up-building of the nation.
Our country—this great republic—means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.
Desire | Law | Little | Manliness | People | Power | Qualities | Success | World |
If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space.
Enemy |
To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; — glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes.
Conscience | Defeat |
Where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruin.
World |
Men's actions are derived from the opinions they of the good or evil, which from those actions rebound unto themselves.
From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.
Circumstances | Death | Question | Reputation | Society | Time | Society |
In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.
Defeat |
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say, by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who contributes either by his purse or person to the support of his country.
Defeat | Democracy | Government | Lending | Revolution | Will | Government |
The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the principal studies and endeavours of our lives. The only method of doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will, to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These considerations, and others such as these, may enable us in some measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear up with a tolerable degree of patience under this burthen of life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey’s end, when we may deliver up our trust into the hands of him who gave it, and receive such reward as to him shall seem proportioned to our merit.
Ambition | Defeat | Experience | History | Knowledge | Means | People | Power | Tyranny | Ambition |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
You have never spent any time in theatrical circles, have you? So you do not know those thespian faces that can embody the features of a Julius Caesar, a Goethe and a Beethoven all in one, but whose owners, the moment they open their mouths, prove to be the most miserable ninnies under the sun.