This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
For how might sweetness ever have been known to him who never tasted bitterness? Felicity exists for those alone who first have suffered sorrow and distress... By opposites does one in wisdom grow.
Bitterness | Character | Distress | Sorrow | Wisdom |
Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.
How mysterious in this human life, with all its diversities of contrast and compensation; this web of checkered destinies,; this sphere of manifold allotment, where man lives in his greatness and grossness, a little lower than the angels, a little higher than the brutes.
Angels | Character | Compensation | Contrast | Greatness | Life | Life | Little | Man |
It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men |
The meaning of man's life lies in his perfecting the universe. He has to distinguish, father and redeem the sparks of holiness scattered throughout the darkness of the world. This service is the motive of all precepts and good deeds.
Character | Darkness | Deeds | Distinguish | Father | Good | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Service | Universe | World |
The distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
I have often seen individuals who simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through the widening of his view, the insoluble problem, lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and strong life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led the wildest conflicts and emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that instead of being in it, one is now above it.
Character | Consciousness | Contrast | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | Light | Means | Panic | Personality | Reality |
Robin Lakoff, fully Robin Tolmach Lakoff
The distinction between men’s and women’s language is a symptom of a problem in our culture, not the problem itself. Basically it reflects the fact that men and women are expected to have different interests and different roles, hold different types of conversations, and react differently to other people.
Character | Culture | Distinction | Language | Men | People |
Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.
Character | Childhood | Evil | Experience | Father | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Promise | World | Youth | Child | Think |
Everything really comes down to the distinction between what we have and what we are.
Character | Distinction |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
It behooves a father to be virtuous if he expects his son to be more virtuous than he has been.
To have to die is a distinction which no man is proud.
Character | Distinction | Man |