This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If we think of life as a journey and consider it to be the opportunity for getting from where we are to where we want to be, we will have a working rule that provides us with both a purpose and expanding possibilities for our lives.
Character | Journey | Life | Life | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rule | Will | Think |
Howard Cosell, fully Howard William Cosell, born Howard William Cohen
Courage takes many forms. there is physical courage, there is moral courage. Then there is a still higher type of courage - the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead.
Character | Courage | Day | Enthusiasm | Joy | Life | Life | Pain |
Learn to laugh. And most of all, learn to laugh at yourself. The person who can give a riotous account of his own faux pas, will never have to listen to another's embarrassing account of it. He will rarely know the sting of humiliation. His a delight to be with, but more important, he is enjoying his own life, and applying to his ills and errors the most soothing balm the human spirit has devised - laughter.
Character | Important | Laughter | Life | Life | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Learn |
Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith
Humanity is much more shown in our conduct towards animals, where we are irresponsible except to heaven, than towards our fellow-creatures, where we are restrained by the laws, by public opinion, and fear of retaliation.
Character | Conduct | Fear | Heaven | Humanity | Opinion | Public | Retaliation |
As character to be used for eternity must be formed in time and in good time, so good habits to be used for happiness in this life must be formed early; and then they will be a treasure to be desired in the house of the wise, and an oil of life in their dwellings.
Character | Eternity | Good | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wise | Happiness |
Prayer requires more of the heart than of the tongue.
Thought precedes the will to think, and error lives ere reason can be born. Reason, the power to guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp of wand'ring life, that winks and wakes by turns fooling the follower 'twixt shade and shining.
Character | Error | Power | Reason | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |
The human heart is a mirror of the things that are near and far.
Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write you name, in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year; you will never be forgotten. No, your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.
Character | Deeds | Destroy | Good | Heaven | Kindness | Love | Mercy | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Deeds |
Elizabeth Carew, Lady Carew, formerly Lady Elizabeth Bryan
The fairest action of our human life is scorning to revenge an injury; for who forgives without a further strife, his adversary’s heart to him doth tie: and ‘tis a firmer conquest, truly said, to win the heart than overthrow the head.
Action | Character | Conquest | Heart | Life | Life | Revenge |