This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every man is an island. Each person radiates feelings to others, but ultimately we are alone. For me, the essence of life is how we handle our loneliness. There are moments when we manage to resolve this loneliness through personal relationships, especially through love. But there are also certain situations in which you feel truly alone, when even words and affection cannot ease your fears.
Character | Feelings | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Man | Words |
It is a common sense and self-interest to refrain from lashing out immediately to avenge an injury. A higher level of humanity is entirely overcoming feelings of vengeance in one’s heart. This is the glory of the morally wise man.
Character | Common Sense | Feelings | Glory | Heart | Humanity | Man | Self | Self-interest | Sense | Vengeance | Wise |
Whitney Young, fully Whitney Moore Young, Jr.
The unhealthy gap between what we preach in America and what we often practice creates a moral dry rot that eats at the very foundation of our democratic ideals and values.
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. People grow old only by deserting their ideals and outgrowing the consciousness of youth. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. You are as old as your doubt; your fear; your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self-confidence young. Keep your hope young.
Character | Confidence | Consciousness | Despair | Doubt | Enthusiasm | Faith | Fear | Hope | Ideals | Life | Life | Mind | People | Self | Self-confidence | Soul | Time | Youth | Old |
Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are centered on self; all our instincts are at first directed to our own preservation and our own welfare. Thus the first notion of justice springs not from what we owe to others, but from what is due to us.
Benevolent feelings ennobles the most trifling actions.
Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To work through and complete grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to express and release our feelings fully and to tolerate and accept our feeling for however long it takes for the wound to heal. We fear that once acknowledged grief will bowl us over. The truth is that grief experienced does dissolve. Grief unexpressed is grief that lasts indefinitely.
Attention | Character | Fear | Feelings | Grief | Means | Order | Truth | Will | Work |
Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined; the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.
Character | Circumstances | Education | Feelings | Knowledge | Morality | Motives |
Happiness is a resultant of the relative strengths of positive and negative feelings rather than an absolute amount of one or the other.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.
Catherine Bowen, née Catherine Shober Drinker
The professors laugh at themselves, they laugh at life; they long ago abjured the bitch-goddess Success, and the best of them will fight for his scholastic ideals with a courage and persistence that would shame a soldier. The professor is not afraid of words like truth; in fact he is not afraid of words at all.
Courage | Ideals | Life | Life | Persistence | Shame | Success | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Words | Afraid |
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words.
Crime | Cruelty | Deference | Devotion | Enthusiasm | Feelings | Indignation | Little | Nothing | Oppression | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Words |