This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
James T. Farrell, fully James Thomas Farrell
When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.
Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
If we look back upon the usual course of our feelings, we shall find that we are more influenced by the frequent recurrence of objects than by their weight and importance; and that habit has more force in forming our habits than our opinions have. The mind naturally takes its tone and complexion from what it habitually contemplates.
The character of a people, like the character of a person, should not be measured by its worst, but rather by its best; and reckoned by that rule and by that standard.
Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"
Whatever can lead an intelligent being to the exercise or habit of mental enjoyment, contributes more to his happiness than the highest sensual or mere bodily pleasures. The one feeds the soul, while the other, for the most part, only exhausts the frame, and too often injures the immortal part... Let all seen enjoyments lead to the unseen fountain from whence they flow.
Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. Your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.
Activity is the presence of function - character is the record of function.
A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents, it is not created by external advantages, it is no necessary appendage of birth, wealth, talents or station; but it is the result of one’s own endeavors.
Joseph Grew, fully Joseph Clark Grew
Moral stimulation is good but moral complacency is the most dangerous habit of mind we can develop, and that danger is serious and ever-present.
Character | Complacency | Danger | Good | Habit | Mind | Present | Danger |
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
Character | Consciousness | Habit | Little | Man | People | Soul |
No habit has any real hold on you other than the hold you have on it.
Nature... is frugal in her operations and will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a name, these are complex objective stuff out of which my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go through a long education of the eye and ear before they can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every perception is an acquired perception.
Character | Education | Experience | Habit | Instinct | Knowledge | Nature | Perception | Present | Unity | Will |