This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing. Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness. When people are bored, they generally look about for a new pleasure, or take a holiday. There is no greater mistake: what they want is some hard piece of work, some productive drudgery. Doctors are fond of sending their fashionable patients to take a rest cure. In nine cases out of ten a work cure would do them far more good.
Character | Good | Happy | Idleness | Mistake | Nothing | People | Pleasure | Rest | Work |
Freedom rests, and always will, on individual responsibility, individual integrity, individual effort, individual courage, and individual religious faith. It does not rest in Washington. It rests with you and me.
Character | Courage | Effort | Faith | Freedom | Individual | Integrity | Responsibility | Rest | Will |
Envy and anger, not being caused by pain and pleasure simply in themselves, but having in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not therefore to be found in all men, because those other parts, of valuing their merits, or intending revenge, is wanting in them. but all the rest [of the passions], terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure; we hate, fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately. In fine, all these passions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them.
Anger | Character | Desire | Envy | Fear | Hate | Hope | Love | Men | Pain | Pleasure | Respect | Rest | Revenge | Respect |
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
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 |
To start from self does not mean to be selfish. It means to start from premises based on human life and the rest of nature, rather than premises that are the artificial products of the Corporate State, such as power or status. It is not an ‘ego trip’ but a radical subjectivity designed to find genuine values in a world whose official values are false and distorted. It is not egocentricity, but honesty, wholeness, genuineness in all things. It starts from self because human life is found as individual units, not as corporations and institutions; its intent is to start from life.
Character | Ego | Honesty | Individual | Life | Life | Means | Nature | Power | Rest | Self | Wholeness | World |
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
Absolute | Character | Contentment | Immortality | Man | Nature | Rest | Spirit |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of healthy, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.
Character | Evil | Heart | Man | Rest | Sorrow | World | Loss |
Francis Walsingham, fully Sir Francis Walsingham
Every virtue gives a man a degree of felicity in some kind: honesty gives a man a good report; justice, estimation; prudence, respect; courtesy and liberality, affection; temperance gives health; fortitude, a quiet mind, not to be moved by any adversity.
Adversity | Character | Courtesy | Estimation | Fortitude | Good | Health | Honesty | Justice | Man | Mind | Prudence | Prudence | Quiet | Respect | Virtue | Virtue |
Rabbi Akiva, fully Rebbe Akiva ben Yosef NULL
Whatsoever is hateful unto thee, do it not unto thy neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah, the rest is but commentary.