This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We never know a greater character until something congenial to it has grown up within ourselves.
Whatever deprives a man of personal individual motive for self-improvement and robust exertion will not make him free, but on the contrary more servile and in the long run less intelligent, industrious and free, for freedom is a matter of character and will power.
Character | Freedom | Improvement | Individual | Man | Power | Self | Self-improvement | Will |
What is sometimes called an act of self-expression might better be termed one of self-exposure; it discloses character - or lack of character - to others. In itself, it is only a spewing forth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.
Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
The man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.
Character | Difficulty | Man |
Joseph Francis Eduard Desmahis
We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves.
Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer of result.
Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself.
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.
Character | Day | Earth | Fate | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Smile | Sympathy | Work | Fate | Happiness |
Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"
We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himsefl without love he gives away his passions and coarse pleasuures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himsefl. The man wholies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone.
Character | Distinguish | Love | Lying | Man | Men | Order | Respect | Truth | Respect |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.
Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |
Heartlessness and fascination, in about equal quantities, constitute the receipt for forming the character of coquette.
Exaggerated respect for athletics, an excess of coarse impressions brought about by the technical discoveries of recent years, the increased severity of the struggle for existence due to the economic crisis, the brutalization of political life: all these factors are hostile to the ripening of the character and the desire for real culture, and stamp our age as barbarous, materialistic and superficial.
Age | Athletics | Character | Culture | Desire | Excess | Existence | Life | Life | Respect | Struggle | Respect |