This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
Character | Corruption | Enough | Knowledge | Virtue | Virtue |
The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.
Character | Mediocrity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
He who dies for virtue does not perish.
No virtue fades out of mankind. No over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue.
Character | Despair | Experience | Mankind | Virtue | Virtue |
To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul’s expression is not in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself; and this, this alone, is Happiness.
Action | Character | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Happiness |
Never hesitate to ask where the acquisition of virtue is concerned.
The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber. If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fools furnace.
Beauty | Character | Heart | Man | Paradise | Soul | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wise | Beauty | Thought | Vice |
Vice, the opposite of virtue, shows us more clearly what virtue is. Justice becomes more obvious when we have injustice to compare it to. Many such things are proved by their contraries.
Character | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Virtue | Virtue |