This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices, and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men’s charity or their generosity.
Care | Character | Charity | Generosity | Indifference | Industry | Luxury | Men | Nothing | Sloth |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person... Love is an attitude which determines how we relate to the world... Love is an activity of our spirit... Loving others is impossible until we love ourselves.
Character | Love | Relationship | Spirit | World |
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Too many promises lessen confidence.
Character | Confidence |
James G. Huneker, fully James Gibbons Huneker
All men of action are dreamers.
It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated.
Character | Faith | Instinct | Men | Perception | Reason | Repose | Universe |
Love is as necessary to human beings as food and shelter; [but] without intelligence... love is impotent and freedom unattainable.
Character | Freedom | Intelligence | Love |
From their own experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.
Character | Experience | History | Men | Learn |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge. What you have come to know, pursue by exercise; what you have not learned, seek to add to your knowledge, for it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it. Believe that many precepts are better than much wealth , for wealth quickly fails us, but precepts abide through all time.
Better | Character | Good | Knowledge | Love | Time | Wealth | Will | Friends |
Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.
Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
Life and love are not essentially about “a few persons nearest us.” They are found in the spiritual nature that unites us, even if everything else separates us. Apart from this unity, we are still lonesome and alienated - we are merely lonesome together, alienated together.
We may begin with considering a-new the nature and force of sympathy. The minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations, nor can any one be actuated by any affection, of which all others are not, in some degree, susceptible. As in strings equally bound up, the motion of one communicates itself to the rest; so all the affections readily pass from one person to another, and beget correspondent movements in every human creature.
Character | Feelings | Force | Men | Nature | Rest | Sympathy |
One of the most useless of all things is to take a deal of trouble in providing against dangers that never come. How many toil to lay up riches which they never enjoy; to provide for exigencies that never happen; to prevent troubles that never come; sacrificing present comfort and enjoyment in guarding against the wants of a period they may never live to see.
Character | Comfort | Enjoyment | Present | Riches | Troubles | Wants | Riches | Trouble |
A good name, like good will, is got by many actions and lost by one.
Ron and Mary Hulnick, formally H. Ronald Hulnick and
Because I am the only person I will have a relationship with all of my life, I choose: To love myself the way I am now. To always acknowledge that I am enough just the way I am. To love, honor and cherish myself. To be my own best friend. To be the person I would like to spend the rest of my life with. To always take care of myself so that I can take care of others. To always grow, develop and share my love and life.
Care | Character | Enough | Friend | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Relationship | Rest | Will |