This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lewis Schwellenbach, fully Lewis Baxter Schwellenbach
Every right has its responsibilities. Like the right itself, these responsibilities stem from no man-made law, but from the very nature of man and society. The security, progress and welfare of one group is measured finally in the security, progress and welfare of all mankind.
Character | Man | Mankind | Nature | Progress | Right | Security |
Sayings of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot or Pirqe Aboth) NULL
Who is wise? The man who can learn something from every man. Who is strong? The man who overcomes his passion. Who is rich? The man who is content with his fate. Whom do men honor? The man who honors his fellow man.
Character | Fate | Honor | Man | Men | Passion | Wise | Learn |
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Self-expression can be wrong as well as right... When self-expression is identified with irrational surrender to lower instincts, it ends by making the person a slave to those passions. Self-denial is not a renunciation of freedom; it is rather the taming of what is savage and base in our nature for what is higher and better. It is a release from imprisonment by our lusts and passions.
Better | Character | Ends | Freedom | Nature | Right | Self | Self-denial | Surrender | Wrong |
Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful; the proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.
William A. Scully, fully Bishop William Aloysius Scully
Knowledge alone does not stop men from evil. The poor and the ignorant are not the greatest sinners. Man's mind may unfold, his intellect grow more keen, his understanding more profound, yet side by side with this may be a moral degeneration such as existed in pagan Greece and Rome.
George Savile, fully Sir George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue when men have it whether they will or not.
Character | Crime | Men | Popularity | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves.
Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
Freedom is a dreadful thing unless it goes hand in hand with responsibility. Democracy among men is a specter except when the hearts of men are mature.
Character | Democracy | Freedom | Men | Responsibility |
Jean Charles Sismondi, fully Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Whenever we cease to hate, to despite, and to persecute those who think differently from ourselves, whenever we look on them calmly, we find among them men of pure hearts and unbiased judgments, who, reasoning on the same data with ourselves, have arrived at different conclusion on the subject of the spiritual world.
Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world.
Character | Conscience | Good | Human nature | Individual | Men | Nature | Order | Power | Qualities | Rule | Society | World |