This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Now besides life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion, there are countless objectives and forms of good. But I suggest that these other objectives and forms of good will be found, on analysis, to be way or combinations of ways of pursuing (not always sensibly) and realizing (not always successfully) one of the seven basic forms of good, or some combination of them.
Aesthetic | Character | Experience | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Objectives | Play | Religion | Will |
Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions, and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy pocket begin to thrive; creditors will not insult, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite, nor nakedness freeze thee.
Friedrich Gentz, aka Friedrich von Gentz
Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social life would be the sport of winds and waves. If the alter had exclusive sway, or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which these two principles are the most equally balanced. In such ages every enlightened man ought to adopt both principles, and with one hand develop what he can, with the other restrain and uphold what he ought.
Character | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Principles | Progress | World | Govern |
If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
James T. Farrell, fully James Thomas Farrell
When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
It is only in beholding and loving God that we can learn forgetfulness of self, measure duly the nothingness which has dazzled us, and accustom ourselves thankfully to decrease beneath that great Majesty which absorbs all things. Love God and you will be humble; love God and you will throw off the love of self; love God and you will love all that He gives you to love for love of Him.
Character | Forgetfulness | God | Love | Self | Will | God | Learn |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
The best general means to insure the profitable employment of our time is to accustom ourselves to living in continual dependence upon the Spirit of God and His law, receiving, every instant, whatever He is pleased to bestow; consulting Him in every action, and having recourse to Him in our weaker moments when virtue seems to fail.
Action | Character | Dependence | God | Law | Means | Spirit | Time | Virtue | Virtue | God |
The man who is consumed by hate is not only a misery to himself, but a source of misery to all around him, not because of the menace he offers to our interests but because he defiles the atmosphere we breathe and debases the currency of our kind.
The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These for the most part be summed in these two - common sense and perseverance.
Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Means | Perseverance | Qualities | Sense |
Unless a man has been kicked around a little, you can't really depend upon him to amount to anything.
Only the man who can impose discipline on himself is fit to discipline others or can impose discipline on others.
Character | Discipline | Man |