This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If you are willing to forget that there is an element of duty in love and of love in duty, then it's easy to choose between the two.
The search for truth is, as it always has been, the noblest expression of the human spirit. Man's insatiable desire for knowledge about himself, about his environment and the forces by which he is surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity... And yet we know, deep in our hearts, that knowledge is not enough... Unless we can anchor our knowledge to moral purposes, the ultimate result will be dust and ashes - dust and ashes that will bury the hopes and monuments of men beyond recovery.
Character | Desire | Dignity | Enough | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Search | Spirit | Truth | Will |
The purpose of suffering is to arouse a person to improve his ways and this is the greatest good for a person. This love of the Almighty manifest in suffering is not merely to save a person from retribution in the afterlife, but also to elevate a person and assist him in attaining more virtues.
Afterlife | Character | Good | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering |
A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds, in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends.
Character | Mind | Search | Society | Truth | Society | Value |
The awakening of our best sympathies, the cultivation of our best and purest tastes, strengthening the desire to be useful and good, and directing youthful ambition to unselfish ends, such are the objects of true education.
Ambition | Awakening | Character | Cultivation | Desire | Education | Ends | Good | Ambition |
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.
Neutrality in things good or evil is both odious and prejudicial; but in matters of an indifferent nature is safe and commendable. Herein taking of parts maketh sides, and breaketh unity. In an unjust cause of separation, he that favoreth both parts may perhaps have least love of either side, but hath most charity in himself.
Cause | Character | Charity | Evil | Good | Love | Nature | Neutrality | Safe | Unity |
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.
We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.
Beauty | Character | God | Love | Mirth | Qualities | Understanding | Youth | God |
Remember that God will not be mocked; that it is the heart of the worshiper which He regards. We are never safe till we love Him with our whole heart whom we pretend to worship.
Character | God | Heart | Love | Safe | Will | Wisdom | Worship | God |
A person who does not mix with other people will not know how to help others. Such a person lacks knowledge about the way people think, their wants and their desires. Even if he wants to help others, he will not know what is good for them. When he wants to comply with the wishes of others, he will confuse them with his own wishes. Because he lacks knowledge about other people, he will not be able to say what is appropriate and acceptable even if he tries. His obstacle is not a lack of love for his fellow man, but a lack of understanding of others.
Character | Good | Knowledge | Love | Man | People | Understanding | Wants | Will | Wishes | Obstacle |
A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness; external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him; all exaggeration or unreality, affection and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine. The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight.
Character | Earth | Exaggeration | Falsehood | Friend | God | Heart | Husband | Indifference | Love | Wife | Will | Words | Parent |
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 |
Are there things valuable because desired, or desired because valuable?... Desire is not blind. Understanding is not bloodless. Neither is the slave of the other. There is no priority.
Character | Desire | Understanding |
To bear up under loss; to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close; to resist disease and evil men and base instincts; to hate hate and to love love; to go on when it would seem good to die; to look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be - that is what any man can do, and be great.
Anger | Bitterness | Character | Defeat | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Grief | Hate | Love | Man | Men | Smile | Tears | Weakness |