This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We try to make a virtue of vices we are loathe to correct.
Moderation has been created a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.
Ambition | Fortune | Men | Merit | Moderation | People | Virtue | Virtue | Ambition |
Titles, indeed, may be purchased; but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.
Restraint of discipline, emulation, examples of virtue and of justice, form the education of the world.
Discipline | Education | Justice | Restraint | Virtue | Virtue | World |
Though indolence and timidity keep us to the path of duty, virtue often gets all the credit... Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers lose themselves in the sea.
Credit | Duty | Indolence | Self | Self-interest | Virtue | Virtue |
There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom.
Government | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Government |
All government indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act is founded on compromise and barter.
Enjoyment | Government | Virtue | Virtue | Government |
Perfect virtue is to do unwitnessed that which we should be capable of doing before all the world.
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these; for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
Peace | Perfection | Progress | Prosperity | Virtue | Virtue |
Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, and admits no excess but error. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall. But in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.
Angels | Charity | Danger | Desire | Error | Excess | Knowledge | Man | Power | Virtue | Virtue | Danger |
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men's minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand by depressing another's fortune.
Evil | Fortune | Good | Hope | Man | Men | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
The Virtue of Prosperity is Temperance; the Virtue of Adversity is Fortitude: which in Morals is the more Heroical Virtue.
Adversity | Fortitude | Prosperity | Virtue | Virtue |
To speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroic virtue.
Adversity | Fortitude | Prosperity | Virtue | Virtue |