This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education.
Character | Discipline | Education | Freedom | Grave | Order | Space | Unity |
Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe
From the very beginning of a person’s life one learns that the purpose of life is not uninterrupted pleasure. Every infant suffers pains and illnesses. We should not perceive illness and pain as negative. Suffering teaches us humility. We learn that we do not have complete power over ourselves.
Beginning | Character | Humility | Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Learn |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.
Character | Day | Perfection |
A good character when established should not be rested in as an end, but only employed as a means of doing still further good.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
A great estate is a great disadvantage to those who do not know hot to use it, for nothing is more common than to see wealthy persons live scandalously and miserably; riches do them no service in order to virtue and happiness; it is precept and principle, not an estate, that makes a man good for something.
Character | Good | Man | Nothing | Order | Precept | Riches | Service | Virtue | Virtue | Riches |
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
We are free when our acts spring from our whole personality... Our character is still ourselves.
Character | Personality |
There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with a continuous series of such thoughts as these: that where a man can live, there he can also live well.
The first step towards a creation of character lies, then, in the deliberate choosing of what we think and then thinking persistently on the chosen quality.
Real joy seems dissonant from the human character in its present condition; and if it be felt, it must come from a higher region, for the world is shadowed by sorrow; thorns array the ground; the very clouds, while they weep fertility on our mountains, seem also to shed a tear on man’s grave who departs, unlike the beauties of summer, to return no more; who fades unlike the sons of the forest, which another summer beholds new clothed, when he is unclothed and forgotten.
It's what each of us sows, and how, that gives to us character and prestige. Seeds of kindness, goodwill, and human understanding, planted in fertile soil, spring up into deathless friendships, big deeds of worth, and a memory that will not soon fade out. We are all sowers of seeds - and let us never forget it!
Character | Deeds | Kindness | Memory | Understanding | Will | Worth | Deeds |
It is in periods of apparent disaster, during the sufferings of whole generations, that the greatest improvement in human character has been effected.
Character | Improvement |