This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Unrequited love is the meaning of life. We’re here to love but not to be loved, to give but not receive. Our mission in this world is to improve humanity and leave a better history than we found. Only selfless love has such power. Only love without interest or expectation of reward can change human beings... To give love without receiving love is the truest love and brings the greatest happiness there is in life.
Better | Change | Character | Expectation | History | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mission | Power | Receive | Reward | World | Expectation | Happiness |
Enthusiasm is a kind of faith that has been set afire.
Character | Enthusiasm | Faith | Wisdom |
Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe
Every person in the world waits for signs of recognition and affection from others.
The strongest barrier to faith is selfishness.
Character | Faith | Selfishness |
Real joy seems dissonant from the human character in its present condition; and if it be felt, it must come from a higher region, for the world is shadowed by sorrow; thorns array the ground; the very clouds, while they weep fertility on our mountains, seem also to shed a tear on man’s grave who departs, unlike the beauties of summer, to return no more; who fades unlike the sons of the forest, which another summer beholds new clothed, when he is unclothed and forgotten.
Faith without evidence is, properly, not faith, but prejudice or presumption; faith beyond evidence is superstition, and faith contrary to evidence is either insanity or willful perversity of mind.
Character | Evidence | Faith | Insanity | Mind | Prejudice | Presumption | Superstition |
Paganism attributes the creation of the world to blind chance.
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
Illusion and self-deception stand in the way of an honest, penetrating and fearless self-appraisal. Though it would appear that we have access to the innermost core of our individual being, and that there is nothing in the world with which we are on more intimate terms than our own self, the self remains an elusive object of knowledge and understanding.
Character | Illusion | Individual | Knowledge | Nothing | Object | Self | Self-deception | Understanding | World |
As a weak limb grows stronger by exercise, so will your faith be strengthened by the very efforts you make in stretching it out towards things unseen.
Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, aka Rabbi Avraham Maimuni, aka Rabbeinu Avraham ben ha-Rambam NULL
Do not yearn for any other situation in the world besides the one you actually find yourself in.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty, or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light, or look the world in the face.