This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The man who is a drunkard has no intellectual freedom. Science declares that alcohol seeks the intellectual faculties, clogs the brain cells, distorts the reason, vitiates the mind, shatters the nerve centres, and he who is diseased with inebriety cannot enjoy intellectual freedom.
National Commission on Excellence in Education NULL
Help your children understand that excellence in education cannot be achieved without intellectual and moral integrity coupled by hard work and commitment.
Character | Children | Commitment | Education | Excellence | Integrity | Work | Excellence | Understand |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil, and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. so do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
Beauty | Character | Labor | Light | Virtue | Virtue | Work | Beauty |
Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-centered; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever in the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be.
Beauty | Body | Character | Life | Life | Order | Self | Soul |
Be patient in little things. Learn to bear the every-day trials and annoyances of life quietly and calmly, and then, when unforeseen trouble or calamity comes, your strength will not forsake you. There is much difference between genuine patience and sullen endurance, as between the smile of love, and the malicious gnashing of the teeth.
Calamity | Character | Day | Endurance | Life | Life | Little | Love | Patience | Smile | Strength | Trials | Will | Calamity | Trouble | Learn |
It is not by running hither and thither outside of itself that the soul understands morality and right conduct: it learns them of its own nature, in its contact with itself, in its intellectual grasp of itself, seeing deeply impressed upon it the images of its primal state.
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians; the one sharpens the appetite - the other prevents indulgence to excess.
Appetite | Character | Excess | Indulgence | Labor |
Reason itself... demands that we recognize the limited place of the virtues of cognition, inquiry, and the cerebral side of life. An adequate account of rationality must rightly stress its importance and primacy while recognizing that the intellectual virtues are only limited components of the good life.
Character | Good | Inquiry | Life | Life | Rationality | Reason |
Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein
What is the difference between mourning and sadness? Mourning takes hold of one’s heart, but not one’s mind, while sadness takes hold of the mind. Mourning leads to thinking, while sadness stops one’s thoughts. Mourning stems from the light in one’s soul, while sadness comes from the darkness of the soul. Mourning arouses one to life, while sadness brings to the opposite. The Torah obligates mourning when it is appropriate, while it forbids sadness and commands we serve the Almighty with joy.
Character | Darkness | Heart | Joy | Life | Life | Light | Mind | Mourning | Sadness | Soul | Thinking | Torah |