This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange
All duties are matter of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one.
Character | Conscience | Force | Obligation |
Who can confess his poverty and look it in the face, destroys its sting: but a proud poor man, he is poor, indeed.
Louis-Mathieu Molé, aka Count Molé , Comte Molé or Mathieu Molé
If we have need of a strong will in order to do good, it is more necessary still for us in order not to do evil; from which it often results that the most modest life is that where the force of will is most exercised.
Character | Evil | Force | Good | Life | Life | Need | Order | Will |
Contentment furnishes constant joy; much covetousness, constant grief. To the contented, even poverty is joy; to the discontented, even wealth is a vexation.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Through a fatality inseparable from human nature, moderation in great men is very rare: and as it is always much easier to push on force in the direction in which it moves than to stop its movement, so in the superior class of the people, it is less difficult, perhaps, to find men extremely virtuous, than extremely prudent.
Character | Force | Human nature | Men | Moderation | Nature | People | Moderation |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.
Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |
Contentment furnishes constant joy. Much covetousness, constant grief. To the contented, even poverty is joy. To the discontented, even wealth is a vexation.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. so do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.
Beauty | Character | Labor | Light | Virtue | Virtue | Work | Beauty |
Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success.
Achievement | Character | Daring | Force | Opportunity | Persistence | Success | Tact | Vigilance |
Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as poverty of what it has not.
There is nothing a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them.
Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Consciousness | Dignity | Discipline | Discovery | Force | Good | Habit | Influence | Man | Nothing | Occupation | Opinion | Power | Public | Regulation | Self | Thought | Yielding | Discovery |