This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
God’s love is the reason for our creation, a free, gratuitous love, a love without limits... Our duty is to translate this love into acts of solidarity and commitment.
Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax
If men would think more, they would act less.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Many men spend their lives gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.
We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies.
A person not aware of his faults and failings will not work on self-improvement. But if he overexaggerates the extent of his negative qualities and behavior, he will become discouraged and his discouragement will prevent him from improving.
Behavior | Character | Improvement | Qualities | Self | Self-improvement | Will | Work |
In all our reasonings concerning men we must lay it down as a maxim that the greater part are moulded by circumstances.
Character | Circumstances | Men |
J. T. Headley, fully Joel T. Headley
To refine and polish is a part of our work in this world.
Wisdome teacheth men to forecast the worst, that they may be provided against the worst.
There are two kinds of artist in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to other the beauty that has awakened their own admiration.
Admiration | Beauty | Character | Desire | Spirit | Work | World | Beauty |
Corrupt as men are, they are yet so much the creatures of reflection, and so strongly addicted to sentiments of right and wrong, that their attachment to a public cause can rarely be secured, or their animosity be kept alive, unless their understandings are engaged by some appearance of truth and rectitude.
Appearance | Cause | Character | Men | Public | Reflection | Right | Truth | Wrong |
It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man, and men are the particles of which it is composed.
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
Every man’s power have relation to some kind of work; and whenever he finds that kind of work which we can do best - that to which his powers are best adapted - he finds that which will give him the best development, and that by which he can best build up, or make, his manhood.
Be charitable in your thoughts, in your speech and in your actions. Be charitable in your judgments, in your attitudes and in your prayers. Think charitably of your friends, your neighbors, your relatives and even your enemies. And if there be those whom you can help in a material way, do so in a quiet, friendly, neighborly way, as if it were the most command and everyday experience for you. Tongues of men and angels, gifts of prophecy and all mysteries and all knowledge are as nothing without charity.
Angels | Character | Charity | Experience | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Prophecy | Quiet | Speech | Think |
When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in others respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.
Avarice | Character | Evil | Giving | Good | Hate | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Nothing | Society | Guilty |