This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
People generally do not appreciate what they do not suffer for. A thing is held to be cheap if it did not cost dearly.
No perfect thing is too small for eternal recollection.
Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.
Character | Conduct | Conversation | Inclination | Life | Life | Man |
Ways of the Righteous, fully The Ways of Righteousness NULL
Approval-seeking destroys one’s good deeds. Instead of doing the proper thing for its own sake, an approval-seeker will always focus on how others will react to what he is doing... Flattering wrongdoers is the root of much harm. It can lead to others emulating their misdeeds.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Confidence is a thing not to be produced by compulsion. Men cannot be forced into trust.
Character | Confidence | Men | Trust |
To say that people have a moral sense is not the same thing as saying that they are innately good. A moral sense must compete with other senses that are natural to humans - the desire to survive, acquire possessions, indulge in sex, or accumulate power - in short, with self-interest narrowly defined. How that struggle is resolved will differ depending on our character, our circumstances, and the cultural and political tendencies of the day. But saying that a moral sense exists is the same thing as saying that humans, by their nature, are potentially good.
Character | Circumstances | Day | Desire | Good | Nature | People | Possessions | Power | Self | Self-interest | Sense | Struggle | Will |