This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are five tests of the evidence of education - correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue; refined and gentle manners, the result of fixed habits of thought and action; sound standards of appreciation of beauty and of worth, and a character based on those standards; power and habit of reflection, efficiency or the power to do.
Action | Appreciation | Beauty | Character | Correctness | Education | Efficiency | Evidence | Habit | Manners | Mother | Power | Precision | Reflection | Sound | Thought | Wisdom | Worth | Precision | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.
Association | Character | Education | Honesty | Humanity | Man | Men | Organization | Race | Wisdom | Association |
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms, Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Action | Beginning | Character | Death | Earth | Growth | Inheritance | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Object | Sense | Struggle | War | Wisdom |
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke
Pride, like ambition, is sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious, according the character in which it is found, and the object to which it is directed. As a principle, it is the parent of almost every virtue and every vice - everything that pleases and displeases in mankind; and as the effects are so very different, nothing is more easy than to discover, even to ourselves, whether the pride that produces them is virtuous or vicious the first object of virtuous pride is rectitude, and the next independence.
Ambition | Character | Mankind | Nothing | Object | Pride | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Parent | Vice |
John W. Daniel, fully John Warwick Daniel
Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us - a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech - the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling, lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime.
Attention | Character | Charity | Conduct | Crime | Difficulty | Diplomacy | Events | Giving | Intrigue | Life | Life | Means | Men | Mystery | Order | Power | Providence | Purity | Selfishness | Service | Speech | Tact | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise |
It is a very serious duty, perhaps of all duties the most serious, to look into one's own character and conduct, and accurately read one's own heart. It is virtually looking into eternity, and all its vast and solemn realities, which must appear delightful or awful, according as the heart appears to be conformed or not conform to God.
Character | Conduct | Duty | Eternity | God | Heart | Wisdom |
Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell
When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.
Character | Distrust | Extreme | Knowledge | Man | Men | Reading | Wisdom | World |
Environment Pollution Panel NULL
The pervasive nature of pollution, its disregard of political boundaries including state lines, the national character of the technical, economic and political problems involved, and the recognized Federal responsibilities for administering vast public lands which can be changed by pollution, for carrying out large enterprises which can produce pollutants, for preserving and improving the nation’s natural resources, all make it mandatory that the Federal Government assume leadership and exert its influence in pollution abatement on a national scale.
Character | Government | Influence | Nature | Problems | Public | Wisdom | Government | Leadership |
Keep clear of personalities in conversation. Talk of things, objects, thoughts. The smallest minds occupy themselves with persons. Do not needlessly report ill of others. As far as possible, dwell on the good side of human beings. There are family boards where a constant process of depreciating, assigning motives, and cutting up character goes forward. They are not pleasant places. One who is healthy does not wish to dine at a dissecting table. There is evil enough in man, God knows. But it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all. Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity.
Character | Charity | Conversation | Enough | Evil | Family | Gentleness | God | Good | Man | Mission | Motives | Wisdom | Woman | God |
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 results of one's good principles manifested in a course of virtuous and honorable action.
Action | Birth | Character | Good | Parents | Principles | Wealth | Wisdom |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.
Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |
In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away or softened down by the leveling influence of what is termed good-breeding, and he practices so many petty deceptions and affects so many generous sentiments for the purposes of popularity that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character.
Character | Distinguish | Existence | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Opinion | Popularity | Wisdom |
There is a broad distinction between character and reputation, for one may be destroyed by slander, while the other can never be harmed, save by its possessor. Reputation is in no man's keeping. You and I cannot determine what other men shall think and say about us. We can only determine what they ought to think of us and say about us.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men | Reputation | Slander | Wisdom | Think |
Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing.
Character | Competence | Evil | Love of money | Love | Mind | Money | Object | Price | Wealth | Wisdom |