This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Shana Alexander, fully Shana Agar Alexander
The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
Character | Excellence | People | Truth | Excellence |
If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man’s enmity needlessly; since any man’s love may be useful, and every man’s hatred is dangerous.
Character | Desire | Good | Love | Man | Means | Men | Will |
Ahad HaAm, pen name, born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg
Whoever sets out to persuade men to accept a new idea, or one which seems to be new, not just as an idea, but as a truth that is felt, should know beforehand that the human mind is not a blank sheet, on which one an write with ease, and should not therefore grieve or despair when he finds that people do not pay attention to him.
Attention | Character | Despair | Men | Mind | People | Truth |
Philip S. Berg, originally Feivel Gruberger
Our souls are like streams that can never rest until they once again mingle with the Infinite sea... We are here to earn the beneficence of the Creator. This is a process sometimes too difficult to accomplish in one lifetime, but fortunately we are provided with as many lifetimes as necessary.
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
True friendship... always involves the dominance of benevolent impulses, tending toward the benefit of the beloved, whereas the counterfeits of friendship spring primarily or purely from acquisitive desire - seeking something for one’s self.
Character | Desire | Self | Friendship |
Just as a tested and rugged virtue of the moral hero is worth more than the lovely, tender, untried innocence of the child, so is the massive strength of a soul that has conquered truth for itself worth more than the soft peach-bloom faith of a soul that takes truth on trust.
Character | Faith | Hero | Innocence | Soul | Strength | Trust | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |
The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.