This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Any person who thinks rationally will not feel discouraged in the area of personal growth and obtaining wisdom. He realizes that perfection is impossible and not required of him. Constant improvement is what is required and everyone has the ability to improve.
Ability | Character | Growth | Improvement | Perfection | Will | Wisdom |
Suffering has the ability to weaken one’s desires. It can separate a person from cleaving to material matters. When one is in the midst of suffering, he can see it is possible for him to live without gratifying his desires, and without honor and approval. Little by little, he becomes free from those things he was previously bound to. His suffering can help him open his eyes to see his true self and internal wealth.
Ability | Character | Honor | Little | Self | Suffering | Wealth |
Kindness is the inability to remain at ease in the presence of another person who is ill at ease, the inability to remain comfortable in the presence of another who is uncomfortable, the ability to have peace of mind when one's neighbor is troubled.
We are here for communion with God who is Love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us... The miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves, at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming “gods by grace” for those who are “gods” to us. Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner... The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose or goal. It is life itself: God with us making us what God is.
Ability | Character | Existence | God | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Miracles | Paradise | Purpose | Purpose | Unique | God |
I found death to be a simple shift in consciousness. It was painless, instantaneous and nothing to be feared. In fact, it felt more natural not to breath than to breathe. It was wonderful not to 'wear' a body. I had complete mobility, perfect memory and knowledge. I was free! I found no fear in dying. The fear came for me when I realized that I was still alive, and I didn't 'stay dead'.You don't lose your cravings or addictions in dying, but I found that you do lose your ability to satisfy them. The opportunities that existed before are no more. Whatever are your attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, ideas, feelings, expectations or apprehensions...that's what you'll wear and that's what you'll be. They become your body and your world. No more games. No more secrets. No more cover-up. You become what you really are! We are in a condition of our own creation. When we die we reap our own harvest.
Ability | Body | Character | Consciousness | Death | Fear | Feelings | Ideas | Knowledge | Memory | Nothing | World |
John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
Responsibility means, "the ability to respond." In any of life's challenges, opportunities or disasters, we can respond in whatever way we choose. Our response dictates what life hands us next.
Ability | Character | Life | Life | Means | Responsibility |
One sign of maturity is the ability to be comfortable with people who are not like us.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
An eternal happiness is a security for which there is no longer any market value in the speculative nineteenth century; at the very most it may be used by the gentlemen of the clerical profession to swindle rural innocents.
We are constantly repeating messages in our minds. If they are negative: “I’m a failure,” “The world is an awful place,” “Nothing ever goes right,” we make our lives miserable. We have the ability to consciously make an effort to repeat to our selves positive messages: “I have the ability to keep improving,” “The world contains many wonderful opportunities,” “Everything that happens to me can be used for growth”... Little by little they will have a positive effect on your personality and emotions.
Ability | Character | Effort | Emotions | Failure | Growth | Little | Nothing | Personality | Right | Will | World |
John L. Lewis, fully John Llewellyn Lewis
Often those who seek only license for their plundering, cry “liberty.” In the guise of this Old American ideal, men of vast economic domain would destroy what little liberty remains to those who toil. The liberty we seek is different. It is liberty fro common people - freedom from economic bondage, freedom from the oppressions of the vast bureaucracies of great corporations; freedom to regain again some human initiative, freedom that arises from economic security and human self-respect.
Character | Destroy | Freedom | Initiative | Liberty | Little | Men | People | Respect | Security | Self | Old |
One of the marks of true greatness is the ability to develop greatness in others.
John E. Large, fully John Ellis Large
Social security depends on personal security. And personal security depends on spiritual security. Spiritual security is primary, in the sense that every other kind of security stems from it. Without spiritual security, there just can’t be any other kind of lasting security.
It is a mistake to base one’s hopes for happiness upon the enforcement of security and equality. In principle, both desires are insatiable... No individual or society is secure in a world of emergent probability and sin... To exercise liberty is to take risks, to embrace uncertainties.
Character | Equality | Individual | Liberty | Mistake | Security | Sin | Society | World | Society | Happiness |
The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or immortal hope except the principles of the Christian faith...
Character | Faith | Freedom | History | Hope | Knowledge | Light | Principles | Religion | Security | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |