This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Every thought, feeling, word, and action, whether large or small is a cause which sets into motion an eventual corresponding effect. You don’t always sow where you sow, but you always reap what you sow. You can always, at any moment, put a new cause into motion.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
The more a man denies himself, the more he shall obtain from God.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.
The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
The conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character.
Character | Conscience | Courage | Man | Manliness | Perfection |
The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing. Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness. When people are bored, they generally look about for a new pleasure, or take a holiday. There is no greater mistake: what they want is some hard piece of work, some productive drudgery. Doctors are fond of sending their fashionable patients to take a rest cure. In nine cases out of ten a work cure would do them far more good.
Character | Good | Happy | Idleness | Mistake | Nothing | People | Pleasure | Rest | Work |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
Humility collects the soul into a single point by the power of silence. A truly humble man has no desire to be known or admired by others, but wishes to plunge from himself into himself, to become nothing, as if he had never been born. When he is completely hidden to himself in himself, he is completely with God.
Character | Desire | God | Humility | Man | Nothing | Power | Silence | Soul | Wishes |
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering... A great many people think they are thinking when they are rearranging their prejudices... the difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of cause.
Cause | Character | Choice | Good | Important | Man | People | Thinking | Think |
Genuine self-government is possible only in very small groups, societies on a national or super-national scale will always be ruled by oligarchical minorities, whose members come to power because they have a lust for power.
Fear of life is one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn’t reason that will ever do it. Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
Character | Enough | Fear | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Suicide | Thought | Will | Thought |
Beware of prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out... There is nothing respecting which a man must so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices... Opinions grounded [founded] on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.