This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation.
Character | Enthusiasm | Mankind | Nature | Truth |
There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.
Attainment | Beginning | Character | Choice | Darkness | Desire | Evil | Feelings | Good | Heart | Light | Man | Means | Possessions | Right | Understanding | Will | Wrong | Zeal | Vice |
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
Character | Love | Perfection | Truth | World |
We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us.
If we crave for the goal that is worthy and fitting for man, namely, happiness of life - and this is accomplished by philosophy alone and by nothing else, and philosophy, as I said, means for us desire for wisdom, and wisdom the science of truth in things, and of things some are properly so called, others merely share the name - it is reasonable and most necessary to distinguish and systematize the accidental qualities of things.
Character | Desire | Distinguish | Life | Life | Man | Means | Nothing | Philosophy | Qualities | Science | Truth | Wisdom | Happiness |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
When I want to judge someone, I ask him how satisfied he is with himself, to what extent he is pleased with his words or his work.
Man gains freedom only through the use of his highest faculties. Materialism makes him more and more a slave to the forces of the phenomenal world... Our present-day materialism points in this direction - that is, in the direction of the enslavement of man by mechanisation and by its direct results, by state organisations, uniformity, the sacrifice of independent intelligence, the sweeping away of individual differences, local customs, local diversity, and all the infinite branchings of humanity that enrich life... Man is made free by ‘truth’. The truth spoken here is equated with mind. This kind of truth begins with self-knowledge.
Character | Day | Diversity | Freedom | Humanity | Individual | Intelligence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Materialism | Mind | Present | Sacrifice | Self | Self-knowledge | Truth | Uniformity | World |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The spirit of politeness is a desire to bring about by our words and manners, that others may be pleased with us and with themselves.
Character | Desire | Manners | Spirit | Words | Politeness |