This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.
Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.
Character | Cunning | Discretion | Good | Instinct | Life | Life | Looks | Men | Perfection | Reason | Sense | Understanding |
Yosef Leib Bloch, fully R' Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch
Young people imagine there is great value in fame. Those with life experience know that in truth publicity is extremely short-lived. The nature of the world is that every piece of news makes an impression for only a very short time. After those few minutes the impression is erased and quickly forgotten. It is as if it never was.
Character | Experience | Fame | Impression | Life | Life | Nature | News | People | Time | Truth | World | Value |
Man cannot live by bread alone. The making of money, the accumulation of material power, is not all there is to living. Life is something more than these, and the man who misses this truth misses the greatest joy and satisfaction that can come into his life - service for others.
Character | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Money | Power | Service | Truth |
A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth
We walk, and our religion is shown (even in the dullest and most insensitive person) in how we walk. Or to put it more accurately, living in this world means choosing, choosing to walk, and the way we choose to walk is infallibly and perfectly expressed in the walk itself. Nothing can disguise it. The walk of an ordinary man and of an enlightened man are as different as that of a snake and a giraffe.
Character | Disguise | Man | Means | Nothing | Religion | World |
Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.
Character | Force | Means | Self | Self-interest |
Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed, a Columbus of the skies.