This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to struggle toward it.
Attainment | Character | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Love | Patience | Struggle | Sympathy | Wisdom | Wise |
Paul Moody, fully Paul Dwight Moody
The measure of a man is not the number of his servants but in the number of people whom he serves.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The oldest and best known evil is always more tolerable than a new and unexperienced one.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.
Character | Esteem | Evil | Malice | Pity | Stupidity | Unhappiness | Think |
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil, and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.
To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.
God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.
Better | Character | Evil | God | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
For most or even all forms of evil serve the Universe - much as the poisonous snake has it use - though in most cases their function is unknown. Vice itself has many useful sides: it brings about much that is beautiful, in artistic creations for example, and it stirs us to thoughtful living, not allowing us to drowse in security.
Tai-shang Kan-Ying Pien (Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution) NULL
The recompense of good and evil follows as the shadow follows the figure.
Character | Evil | Good | Recompense |
Even when there is no law, there is conscience... An evil conscience is often quiet, but never secure.
Character | Conscience | Evil | Law | Quiet |