This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Conformity | Self | Self-reliance | Virtue | Virtue |
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Better | Conformity | Conspiracy | Culture | Liberty | Self | Self-reliance | Society | Surrender | Virtue | Virtue | Society |
If a nation of men is exalted to that height of morals as to refuse to fight and choose rather to suffer loss of goods and loss of life than to use violence, they must be not helpless but most effective and great men; they would overawe their invader, and make him ridiculous; they would communicate the contagion of their virtue and inoculate all mankind.
Rollo May, fully Rollo Reese May
Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism.
Courage | Fidelity | Love | Reality | Virtue | Virtue | Value |
You fear to quit the medleys of the world, where vanity reigns, where avarice tarnishes the most beautiful virtues, where infidelity holds dominion with the sway of a despot, where virtue is trampled under foot and vice carries off the prize of honor.
Avarice | Despot | Fear | Honor | Virtue | Virtue | World | Infidelity | Vice |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
It was asked of the sage, In what one virtue are all the rest comprised? Patience, was his answer. And in what single vice are all the others concentrated? Vindictiveness.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.
On the science of beauty everywhere - Remember how in that communion only, 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 forthe and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
Beauty | Friend | God | Man | Mind | Mortal | Reality | Science | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Beauty | God |
Philip Sidney, fully Sir Philip Sidney
In the truly great, virtue governs with the sceptre of knowledge and wisdom.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body with an equality of mind; the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the precept of reason as well as religion, and physician of the soul as well as the body; the tutelary goddess of health and universal medicine of life.
Age | Body | Envy | Equality | Fortune | Health | Indolence | Life | Life | Mind | Old age | Precept | Pride | Reason | Religion | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Old |