This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
The only thing that brings a mother undiluted satisfaction is her relation to a son; it is quite the most complete relationship between human beings, and the one that is the most free from ambivalence. The mother can transfer to her son all the ambition which she has had to surpress in herself, and she can hope to get from him the satisfaction of all that has remained to her of her masculinity complex. Even a marriage is not firmly assured until the woman has succeeded in making her husband into her child and in acting the part of a mother towards him.
Ambition | Character | Hope | Husband | Marriage | Mother | Relationship | Woman | Ambition | Child |
It is a secret, well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they; do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.
Character | Friend | Men | Obligation |
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
We settle things by a majority vote, and the psychological effect of doing that is to create the impression that the majority is probably right. Of course, on any fine issue the majority is sure to be wrong. Think of taking a majority vote on the best music. Jazz would win over Chopin. Or on the best novel. Many cheap scribblers would win over Tolstoy. And any day a prizefight will get a bigger crowd, larger gate receipts and wider newspaper publicity than any new revelation of goodness, truth or beauty could hope to achieve in a century.
Beauty | Character | Day | Hope | Impression | Majority | Music | Revelation | Right | Truth | Will | Wrong | Beauty | Think |
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, born Margaret Power
One of the almost numberless advantages of goodness is, that it blinds its possessor to many of those faults in others which could not fail to be detected by the morally defective. A consciousness of unworthiness renders people extremely quick-sighted in discerning the vices of their neighbors; as person scan easily discover in others the symptoms of those diseases beneath which they themselves have suffered.
Character | Consciousness | People |
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.
He that succeeds makes an important thing of the immediate task.
J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte
What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it. A person indolent by nature or dulled and distorted by mental servitude, learned luxury, and vanity will never raise himself to the level of idealism.
Character | Idealism | Luxury | Man | Nature | Philosophy | Servitude | Soul | System | Will |
Continual success in obtaining those things which a man form time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Sense | Success | Time | Tranquility |
Why do we look old? Because we remember the weight of the burden of last year's experiences. There is no other reason. Instead of lifting our faces, we should discover that the thing to lift is our thought. It is the mind, not the physical body, which has the stamp of age and reflects it in the body.
Jose ben Halafta, or Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, aka Rabbi Yossi
One pang of conscience is worth more than many lashes.
Character | Conscience | Worth |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Religion presents few difficulties to the humble; many to the proud; insuperable ones to the vain.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's-land between honesty and dishonesty.
Character | Dishonesty | Honesty | Land | Little | Man | Public |
Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It's just letting the whole thing go. 'I forgive you for not being the way I want you to be. I forgive you and set you free.' (Affirmation sets you free.)
Behavior | Character | Forgiveness | Giving | Means | Nothing | Forgive |