This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all vices except this one.
Character | Crime | Hypocrisy | Integrity | Witness | Vice |
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretexts of base tyrannies.
There is neither vice nor virtue, there are only circumstances.
Circumstances | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Vice |
The most fearful characteristic of vice is its irresistible fascination - the ease with which it sweeps away resolution, and wins a man to forget his momentary outlook, and his throb of penitence, in the embrace of indulgence.
Indulgence | Man | Resolution | Wisdom | Vice |
Pride, like ambition, is sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious, according the character in which it is found, and the object to which it is directed. As a principle, it is the parent of almost every virtue and every vice - everything that pleases and displeases in mankind; and as the effects are so very different, nothing is more easy than to discover, even to ourselves, whether the pride that produces them is virtuous or vicious the first object of virtuous pride is rectitude, and the next independence.
Ambition | Character | Mankind | Nothing | Object | Pride | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Parent | Vice |
A divine power, mystery, delight, love - and a host of other unquantifiables - are personal realities proven only by themselves, by experience. Even scientific terms such as randomness hint at something ultimately unprovable by strictly scientific means. The phenomena encompass the discipline, not vice versa.
Discipline | Experience | Love | Means | Mystery | Phenomena | Power | Wisdom | Vice |
To look for a purpose in Life outside Life itself amounts to killing Life. Reason is given by Life, not vice versa. Life is prior to meaning... Human life is joyful interrogation. Any answer is blasphemy.
Blasphemy | Life | Life | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Wisdom | Vice |
Politics drives diplomacy, not vice versa.
The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
Blessings | Capitalism | Vice |
Sensuality is the vice of young men and of old nations.
Men | Nations | Sensuality | Old | Vice |
The worst type of sin, in fact the only “mortal sin” which has enslaved man for the greater part of history, is the institutionalized sin. Under the institution, vice appears to be, or is actually turned into, virtue. Apathy toward evil is thus engendered; recognition of sin becomes totally effaced; sinful institutions become absolutized, almost idolized, and sin becomes absolutely moral.
Apathy | Evil | History | Man | Mortal | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |