This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa, also known as Rabbeinu Behaye
Envy is hatred without a cure.
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 |
I live in the world, but I seem to myself not of it!.. Natural phenomena are but the shadows of the spirit form which they spring, as the human face changes under the influence of love, hatred or fear... When, O when, shall I be able to reveal its poetry? I see everywhere and in ever object unceasing motion, and in that motion a creative force forever and forever repeating and re-repeating the same simple process as to infinity. Through all nature the grand rhythms roll and heaven and earth are filled with the melody. Men are but boys chasing shadows. The spiritual significance of the world none seem to see - the infinite simplicity of its process are none care to understand.
Boys | Care | Character | Earth | Fear | Force | Heaven | Influence | Love | Melody | Men | Nature | Object | Phenomena | Poetry | Simplicity | Spirit | World |
Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love.
It is better to give love. Hatred is a low and degrading emotion and is so poisonous that no man is strong enough to use it safely. The hatred we think we are directing against some person or thing or system has a devilish way of turning back upon us. When we seek revenge we administer slow poison to ourselves. When we administer affection it is astonishing what magical results we obtain.
Better | Character | Enough | Love | Man | Revenge | System | Think |
Only science can hope to keep technology in some sort of moral order.
Character | Hope | Order | Science | Technology |
What is called affluence - the consequence of the type of rapid economic development which occurred from about the middle of the nineteenth century - is in a real sense an abundance not just of serious problems which machines cannot solve, but of hopeless poverty: the physical insecurity, personal unhappiness, the intensified morality, the sense of being dwarfed by vast and uncontrollable physical, mechanical and corporate structures, the hatred and contempt of other peoples, the lack of opportunity for contemplation, the loss of community life.
Abundance | Character | Contemplation | Contempt | Insecurity | Life | Life | Machines | Morality | Opportunity | Poverty | Problems | Sense | Unhappiness | Loss |
There is a very general belief that, where gadgets are concerned, we can get something for nothing - can enjoy all the advantages of an elaborate, top-heavy and constantly advancing technology without having to pay for them by any compensating disadvantages.
Belief | Character | Nothing | Technology |
Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny
It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete.
Age | Character | Chastity | Day | Folly | Fortitude | Goals | Hope | Munificence | Resignation | Technology | Thought | Training | Virtue | Virtue | Thought |
Every person alive today derives much benefit from comforts and pleasures that in the past were not available. All of the latest inventions and findings of technology serve us to a remarkable degree. For all this we should be full of appreciation and gratitude.
Appreciation | Character | Gratitude | Past | Technology | Appreciation |
Worse than hatred is pretense of love.
The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.
Character | Consciousness | Impossibility | Injustice | Injustice | Object | Rest |
Scandal breeds hatred; hatred begets division; division makes faction, and faction brings ruin.