This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonorable and evil.
Attainment | Possessions | Virtue | Virtue |
If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness — a good and wise life. [You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life.]
Better | Blessings | Future | Good | Life | Life | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth | Will | Wise | Happiness |
Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
Beauty | Friend | God | Man | Mortal | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Beauty | God |
All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce- about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which must be in them- some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis continuously attached to them and representing in image the engendering archetypes: thus fire gives out its heat; snow is cold not merely to itself; fragrant substances are a notable instance; for, as long as they last, something is diffused from them and perceived wherever they are present.
Mathematics, which as a student by nature he will take very easily, will be prescribed to train him to abstract thought and to faith in the unembodied; a moral being by native disposition, he must be led to make his virtue perfect; after the Mathematics he must be put through a course in Dialectic and made an adept in the science.
Abstract | Faith | Mathematics | Nature | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Thought |
How do physical powers form a distinct species? If they are classed as qualities in virtue of being powers, power, we have seen, is not a necessary concomitant of qualities. If, however, we hold that the natural boxer owes his quality to a particular disposition, power is something added and does not contribute to the quality, since power is found in habits also.
Who looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.
Beauty | Birth | Looks | Love | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Beauty |
Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Object |
Every living thing is a combination of soul and body-kind: the celestial sphere, therefore, if it is to be everlasting as an individual entity must be so in virtue either of both these constituents or of one of them, by the combination of soul and body or by soul only or by body only.
Body | Individual | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
If the scientist turns his attention from the present state of the universe to the future, even the very remote future, he finds himself constrained to recognize, both in the macrocosm and in the microcosm, that the world is growing old. In the course of billions of years, even the apparently inexhaustible quantities of atomic nuclei lost utilizable energy and, so to speak, matter becomes like an extinct and scoriform volcano. And the thought comes spontaneously that if this present cosmos, today so pulsating with rhythm and life is, as we have seen, insufficient to explain itself, with still less reason, will any such explanation be forthcoming from the cosmos over which, in its own way, the shadow of death will have passed. Let us now turn our attention to the past. The farther back we go, the more matter presents itself as always more enriched with free energy, and as a theater of vast cosmic disturbances. Thus everything seems to indicate that the material universe had in finite times a mighty beginning, provided as it was with an indescribably vast abundance of energy reserves, in virtue of which, at first rapidly and then with increasing slowness, it evolved into its present state. This naturally brings to mind two questions: Is science in a position to state when this mighty beginning of the cosmos took place? And, secondly, what was the initial or primitive state of the universe? The most competent experts in atomic physics, in collaboration with astronomers and astrophysicists, have attempted to shed light on these two difficult but extremely interesting problems.
Abundance | Attention | Beginning | Death | Energy | Life | Life | Light | Mind | Position | Present | Science | Thought | Universe | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Thought |
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
The domineering overbearance of those who teach the errors, and the thoughtless compliance of the more shallow minds who assent to them, create a corrupted atmosphere which penetrates everywhere, and carries its infection with it… Pride! Pride sits in Modernism as in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and lurking in its every aspect.
Compliance | Pride | Teach |
Some would insist that man is primarily an economic animal interested only in his material well-being. This is too narrow a view of a species which has produced numberless brave men and women who are prepared to undergo relentless persecution to uphold deeply held beliefs and principles. It is my pride and inspiration that such men and women exist in my country today.
Inspiration | Man | Men | Pride |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia. From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.
There is probably no more important task parents--and the rest of the village--face than raising children not only to tolerate but to respect the differences among people and to recognize the rewards that come from serving others. I call this affirmative living--the positive energy we derive from taking pride in who we are and from having the confidence and moral grounding to reach out to those who are different.
Children | Confidence | Energy | Important | People | Pride | Respect | Rest | Respect |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
A pattern has an integrity independent of the medium by virtue of which you have received the information that it exists. Each of the chemical elements is a pattern integrity. Each individual is a pattern integrity. The pattern integrity of the human individual is evolutionary and not static.
Individual | Integrity | Virtue | Virtue |
Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
It is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner, the body, dominion, and honour. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors. Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake. This is the Law of God, that virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that everything else is a trifle.
Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL
Although virtue receives some of its excellences from nature, yet it is perfected by education.