This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
Enemy | Hate | Magnanimity | Wrong |
Life imposes selfish interests and subjective views on every inhabitant of earth: and in hugging these interests and these views the man hugs what he initially assumes to be the truth, a sort of antecedent hatred of it as contrary to presumption, is interwoven into the very fabric of thought.
The love of truth is often mentioned, the hatred of truth hardly ever, yet the latter is the commoner. People say they love the truth when they pursue it, and they pursue it when unknown: not therefore because of any felt affinity to it in their souls.
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
The ordinary man is involved in action; the hero acts - an immense difference.
Does the world need more medicine and energy and buildings and food? No. There is enough food and medicine, there are enough resources for all. There is starvation and poverty and widespread disease because of human ignorance, prejudice, and fear. Out of greed and hatred we hoard materials; we create wars over imaginary geographic boundaries and act as if one group of people is truly different from another group somewhere else on the planet.
Disease | Energy | Enough | Fear | Greed | Ignorance | Need | People | Poverty | Prejudice | World |
A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero - the wise, the good, or the great man - very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light.
Art | Education | Good | Hero | Light | Man | Soul | Wise | Art |
The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation – initiation – return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth. A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from his mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
Adventure | Day | Hero | Man | Power | Rites | Wonder | World |
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
A light supper, a good night’s sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who, by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
Good | Hero | Indigestion | Light | Man |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.
Death | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Observation |
Love blinds to faults, hatred to virtues.
Love |
Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL
The possession of virtue… is always abundant for those who desire it, not like the possession of the earthly, in which those who divide it off into pieces for themselves must take their share from that of the other, and the gain of the one is the neighbor’s loss. From this, because of hatred of loss, arise fights concerning wealth. But the wealth of [virtue] is unenvied, and he who [gains] more brings no penalty to him who is worth of also participating equally in it.
The true warrior is always the last to pick up the lance or go to battle. His battles are fought with the lance of love and understanding. His enemies are prejudice, greed, and bad medicine, and the biggest battles are always fought within himself. So, do not go out upon the earth to battle unseen demons of the physical world, for your hatred will be like theirs. Instead, go out as a true warrior, with love and understanding.
Battle | Earth | Greed | Love | Prejudice | Understanding | Will | World |
To be an object of hatred and aversion to their contemporaries has been the usual fate of all those whose merit has raised them above the common level. The man who submits to the shafts of envy for the sake of noble objects pursues a judicious course for his own lasting fame. Hatred dies with its object, while merit soon breaks forth in full splendor, and his glory is handed down to posterity in never-dying strains.
Envy | Fame | Fate | Glory | Man | Merit | Object | Posterity | Fate |