This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.
The overcoming of private property means the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it means this emancipation precisely because these senses and qualities have become human both subjectively and objectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object derived from and for the human being. The senses have therefore become theoreticians immediately in their practice. They try to relate themselves to their subject matter for its own sake, but the subject matter itself is an objective human relation to itself and to the human being, and vice versa. Need or satisfaction have thus lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.
Means | Nature | Need | Object | Practice | Property | Qualities | Vice |
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
Excellence | Virtue | Virtue | Excellence | Vice |
Our faith comes in moments: our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
Our faith comes in moments, our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
You fear to quit the medleys of the world, where vanity reigns, where avarice tarnishes the most beautiful virtues, where infidelity holds dominion with the sway of a despot, where virtue is trampled under foot and vice carries off the prize of honor.
Avarice | Despot | Fear | Honor | Virtue | Virtue | World | Infidelity | Vice |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
It was asked of the sage, In what one virtue are all the rest comprised? Patience, was his answer. And in what single vice are all the others concentrated? Vindictiveness.
The vice of envy is… always a confession of inferiority.
Envy | Inferiority | Vice |
As virtue is its own reward, so vice is its own punishment.
Punishment | Reward | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
There is no vice so simple, but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts.