This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.
Aims | Character | Labor | Man | Men | Respect | Wisdom | Wishes | World | Respect | Understand |
There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world.
Books | Character | Conversation | Human nature | Knowledge | Learning | Men | Nature | Power | System | Understanding | World |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.
Character | Individual | Instinct | Little | Love | Men | Object | People | Loss | Vicissitudes | Happiness | Value |
The blackout of images of women or men visibly over sixty-five, engaged in any vital or productive adult activity, and their replacement by the ‘problem’ of age, is our society’s very definition of age. Age is perceived only as a decline or deterioration from youth.
Every time we hold our tongues instead of returning the sharp retort, show patience with another's faults, show a little more love and kindness, we are helping to stock-pile more of these peace-bringing qualities in the world instead of armaments for war.
Character | Kindness | Little | Love | Patience | Peace | Qualities | Time | War | World |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
It is only in beholding and loving God that we can learn forgetfulness of self, measure duly the nothingness which has dazzled us, and accustom ourselves thankfully to decrease beneath that great Majesty which absorbs all things. Love God and you will be humble; love God and you will throw off the love of self; love God and you will love all that He gives you to love for love of Him.
Character | Forgetfulness | God | Love | Self | Will | God | Learn |
Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion.
Character | Majority | Men | Persuasion |
There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. They bravely unveil their weaknesses, their doubts, their defects. They are courageous. They boldly ride a-tilt against prejudices. They love their fellow-men profoundly. They are generous. They allow their hearts to expand. They have compassion for all forms of suffering. Pity is the very foundation-stone of Genius.
Character | Compassion | Defects | Genius | Hypocrisy | Love | Men | Pity | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue |
French Student Revolt Graffiti NULL
The Revolution must take place in men before it can be manifest in things.
Character | Men | Revolution |
There is an inevitable divergence, attributed to the imperfections of the human mind, between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it.
Character | Inevitable | Men | Mind | World |