This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All of us who are worth anything spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Faith | Forgiveness | Friend | Good | History | Hope | Love | Nothing | Sense | Worth |
Ideas define our place in the universe, our relations with other people; ideas determine what is important and what is not important, what is fair and what is not fair, what is worth believing and what is not worth believing. Ideas give life meaning.
Ideas | Important | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Universe | Worth |
An ounce of work is worth many pounds of words.
The test of the worth of a preacher is when his congregation [goes] away saying, not “What a beautiful sermon! But “I will do something.”
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
A man's worth is estimated according to his knowledge.
Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL
The possession of virtue… is always abundant for those who desire it, not like the possession of the earthly, in which those who divide it off into pieces for themselves must take their share from that of the other, and the gain of the one is the neighbor’s loss. From this, because of hatred of loss, arise fights concerning wealth. But the wealth of [virtue] is unenvied, and he who [gains] more brings no penalty to him who is worth of also participating equally in it.
Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good.
The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. [alternatively translated as The life which is unexamined is not worth living… or… An unexamined life is not worth living... or… The unexamined life is not the life for man... or… Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man.]
Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way... Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.
Desire | Friend | Giving | Heart | Love | Man | Nothing | Present | Right | Soul | Worth | Friends | Learn |