This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Young love-making - that gossamer web!... The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.
When your property or possessions sustain some damage or loss, work on yourself to accept the Almighty’s judgment with love. Realize you were born without any belongings and you will eventually leave the world without belongings. You need not identify with your possessions since they are not an integral part of you.
Character | Judgment | Love | Need | Possessions | Property | Will | Work | World |
Antoinette Du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières
No one is ever satisfied with his fortune or dissatisfied with his understanding.
Character | Fortune | Understanding |
Life is not the creature of circumstance. Indeed, in the whole universe of everything that is, life alone, life by its very nature, is the antagonist of circumstance... If there is any one thing that is utterly clear about the nature of life, it is that it was meant to master circumstance. The spirit conquers all things when the spirit wills it, and no excuse remains when we fail to live as we wish.
Character | Life | Life | Nature | Spirit | Universe | Wills |
There is but one book for genius - nature.
How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!
Character | Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Love | Mystery | Teach | Truth |
He is one of the noblest conquerors who carries on a successful warfare against his own appetites and passions, and has them under wise and full control.
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus rise and increase.
Character | Important | Men | Morality | Success | Will | World |
Antoinette Du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières
Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt.
To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men.
To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant.
Character | Devil | Future | Happy | Heart | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Memory | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Work |
A person’s soul has a spark of divinity. Forgetting one’s lofty identity, one might pick up major faults and bad habits. Therefore remember at all times that you are a child of the great King and it is not befitting to act in a lowly and degrading manner.
Emil Fackenheim, fully Emil Ludwig Fackenheim
Man can never escape the ideal or absolute; he can merely exchange one absolute for another. He can ignore anything beyond his needs only by making an ideal out of the fulfillment of his needs themselves. In short, man cannot be an animal; he can only be a philosopher or anthropologist who asserts that men are animals and ought to live like them. It is not necessary to point out that this is just to set up another absolute.
Absolute | Character | Fulfillment | Man | Men |
In spiritual matters, every single person lives in an entirely different world. One person’s world in no way touches the world of any other person. Hence, there is no need to feel envious of the spiritual accomplishments of others.
Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"
To arrive at perfection, a man should have very sincere friends, or inveterate enemies; because he would be made sensible of his good or ill conduct either by the censures of the one or the admonitions of the others.
Character | Conduct | Good | Man | Perfection |