This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, also Rabbi Moses Feinstein
Influencing someone for a short time is valuable in itself and never feel discouraged because the influence does not last as long as you would wish.
There was never yet a truly great man that was not able at the same time to be truly virtuous.
No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.
Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |
My will does not produce the motive power to move my limbs. Rather, he who imparted motion to matter, and ordained its laws, shaped my will also; he thus joined together two utterly different things - the movement of matter and the decision of my will in such a way that whenever my will desires some action, the desired bodily movement will occur and vice versa, without there being any causation involved, or any influence of the one upon the other. It is just as if there were two clocks appropriately adjusted with reference to each other and the time of day in such a way that when one struck the hour the other immediately did likewise.
Action | Character | Day | Decision | Influence | Power | Time | Will | Vice |
We're worn into grooves by Time - by our habits. In the end, these grooves are going to show whether we've been second rate or champions, each in his way in dispatching the affairs of every day. By choosing our habits, we determine the grooves into which Time will wear us; and these grooves that enrich our lives and make for ease of mind, peace, happiness - achievement.
Achievement | Character | Day | Mind | Peace | Time | Will | Happiness |
Continual success in obtaining those things which a man form time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Sense | Success | Time | Tranquility |
Every time you give another a "piece of your mind," you add to your own vacuum.
Jose ben Halafta, or Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, aka Rabbi Yossi
One pang of conscience is worth more than many lashes.
Character | Conscience | Worth |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Religion presents few difficulties to the humble; many to the proud; insuperable ones to the vain.
No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.
W. T. Grant, fully William Thomas Grant
It must be obvious to those who take the time to look at human life that its greatest values lie not in getting things, but in doing them, in doing them together, in all working toward a common aim, in the experience of comradeship, of warmhearted 100% human life.
Character | Experience | Life | Life | Time |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
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.
It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men |
What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
Character | Impatience | Men | People | Time | Unhappiness |