This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or immortal hope except the principles of the Christian faith...
Character | Faith | Freedom | History | Hope | Knowledge | Light | Principles | Religion | Security | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |
Humanity goes on and on almost in despair, hoping some time to find rest and peace and fullness of life in the undefined future, when, in fact, all these and more are here now if we would (could?) only reach out our hand and take them.
Character | Despair | Future | Humanity | Life | Life | Peace | Rest | Time |
Frank Pierson, fully Frank Romer Pierson
The time men spend in trying to impress others they could spend in doing the things by which others would be impressed.
W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross
No act is ever, in virtue of falling under some general description, necessarily actually right... moral acts often (as every one knows) and indeed always (on reflection we must admit) have different characteristics that tend to make them a the same time prima facie right and prima facie wrong; there is probably no act, for instance, which does good to anyone without doing harm to someone else, and vice versa.
Character | Good | Harm | Reflection | Right | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Vice |
It is no happiness to live long, nor unhappiness to die soon; happy is he that hath lived long enough to die well.
Character | Enough | Happy | Unhappiness | Happiness |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
Each person is a one time phenomenon, an occurrence that has never been before and will never be again. You have a unique blend of character traits and personality. You are unique in your particular family constellation, born in a specific time of history and in a specific environment. This uniqueness gives you great importance. Only you can accomplish your unique life tasks.
Character | Family | History | Life | Life | Personality | Time | Unique | Will |
Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein
A person who makes his happiness dependent on material or physical pleasures will never be guaranteed happiness. There is always something that might happen to destroy his happiness and success. The only guarantee for happiness is to find happiness in spiritual growth.
Character | Destroy | Growth | Guarantee | Success | Will | Happiness |
Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar
All weaknesses are just fabrications of mind. If I am not happy with myself, how can you make me happy? It takes time to see that my unhappiness stems from myself and not from you. We love to blame others as the source of our unhappiness because that is how we feel good about ourselves. But when we go deeper, we realize that no one in the whole world can make us happy or unhappy. It depends on our own integrity.
Blame | Character | Good | Happy | Integrity | Love | Mind | Time | Unhappiness | World |