This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The golden thread in the mind of man is the light that leads towards excellence as a human objective. If perfection is a divine attribute, excellence is a human incentive and a healthy aim, even when we fall short of the target.
Excellence | Light | Man | Mind | Perfection | Wisdom | Excellence |
The true grandeur of nations is in those qualities which constitute the true greatness of the individual.
Greatness | Individual | Nations | Qualities | Wisdom |
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
We are not speaking of the perfection of life, forces, and forms as increasing or decreasing according to the degrees of extension or continuity, because these degrees are generally known; but as ascending or descending according to the degrees of ascent, or discrete (discontinuous) degrees, can be but little known from things visible in the natural world.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
The end is the source of everything that exists in the cause and the end of everything that exists in the effect... end, cause and effect, exist in the greatest and least things... To think from ends is the method of wisdom, from causes that of intelligence, and from effects that of knowledge. From this it may be seen that all perfection increases in and according to the ascent to higher degrees.
Cause | Ends | Intelligence | Knowledge | Method | Perfection | Wisdom | Think |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
We may naturally believe that it is not the singular prosperity of the few, but the greater well-being of all that is most pleasing in the sight of the Creator and Preserver of men. What appears to me to be man’s decline, is His eye, advancement; what afflicts me is acceptable to Him. A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just: and its justice constitutes its greatness and its beauty. I would strive, then, to raise myself to this point of the divine contemplation and thence to view and judge the concerns of men.
Beauty | Contemplation | Equality | Greatness | Justice | Man | Men | Prosperity | Wisdom | Contemplation |
It is by insisting on an impossible standard of perfection that sceptics make themselves secure.
All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself; inasmuch as the perfection of all things are so many similitudes of the divine essence.
Desire | God | Perfection | God |
Technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.
Cause | Greatness | Technology |
There is no one in the world who cannot arrive without difficulty at the most eminent perfection by fulfilling with love obscure and common duties.
Difficulty | Love | Perfection | World |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
The price of greatness is responsibility.
Greatness | Price | Responsibility |
All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.
Character | Existence | Greatness | Individuality | Man | Mediocrity | Will |
Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat
The moral goodness of man, the necessary consequence of his constitution, is capable of indefinite perfection like all his other faculties, and nature has linked together in an unbreakable chain truth, happiness and virtue.
Man | Nature | Perfection | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |