This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?
Character | Defects | Human nature | Men | Nature | Philosophy |
Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL
We cannot think two thoughts at the same time. Consequently, when negative thoughts arise, you do not need to fight them. Make an effort to think positive thoughts, and the negative thoughts will disappear.
If one lives with Nature a little while, he soon recognizes the harmony of creation... Each of us is, therefore, an instrument of God. When one thinks of his humble self in this light, life takes on a more profound meaning.
Character | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Light | Little | Meaning | Nature | Self |
Wisdom's task is to investigate all that nature has to show.
Programmes of a political nature are important and products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outside from there.
Character | Heart | Important | Individual | Nature | Right | Work | World |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purpose as one’s own. When you ask for it back again, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press still further, either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend.
Character | Enemy | Friend | Kindness | Money | Purpose | Purpose |
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, born Frederick Lawrence
If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the main purpose of individual life I would express it as the enlargement of personality. Unless an individual can transcend the limits of class, sex, race, age and creed, his personality remains of necessity to that extent incomplete.
Age | Character | Creed | Individual | Life | Life | Necessity | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Wisdom |
Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.
Men who fight about religion have no religion to fight about, since they do in the name of religion the thin which religion itself forbids. To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious. It were better to be of no church than to be bitter in any.
We live in a narrow reality, partly conditioned by our form of perception and partly made by opinions that we have borrowed, to which our self-esteem is fastened. We fight for our opinions, not because we believe them but because they involve the ordinary feeling of oneself. Though we are continually being hurt owing to the narrowness of the reality in which we dwell, we blame life, and do not see the necessity of finding absolutely new standpoints. All ideas that have a transforming power change our sense of reality.
Blame | Change | Character | Esteem | Ideas | Life | Life | Necessity | Perception | Power | Reality | Self | Self-esteem | Sense |
The need for devotion to something outside ourselves is even more profound than the need for companionship. If we are not to go to pieces or wither away, we all must have some purpose in life; for no man can live for himself alone.
Character | Devotion | Life | Life | Man | Need | Purpose | Purpose |
The purpose of serving God... is to promote man's perfection.