This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe
The most feared event in a person’s life is death. But we have the ability to transform our death into the greatest act we will perform in our entire life. We can perceive death as our total submission to the will of the Almighty and find tremendous spiritual elevation.
Ability | Character | Death | Life | Life | Submission | Will |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Our understanding are always liable to error. Nature and certainty is very hard to come at; and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense.
Character | Error | Nature | Understanding |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with a continuous series of such thoughts as these: that where a man can live, there he can also live well.
If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man’s enmity needlessly; since any man’s love may be useful, and every man’s hatred is dangerous.
Character | Desire | Good | Love | Man | Means | Men | Will |
Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease, the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him that has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty; and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort will soon follow.
Character | Comfort | Disease | Grave | Idleness | Life | Life | Little | Novelty | Temptation | Time | Will | Novelty |
The first step towards a creation of character lies, then, in the deliberate choosing of what we think and then thinking persistently on the chosen quality.
Ahad HaAm, pen name, born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg
Whoever sets out to persuade men to accept a new idea, or one which seems to be new, not just as an idea, but as a truth that is felt, should know beforehand that the human mind is not a blank sheet, on which one an write with ease, and should not therefore grieve or despair when he finds that people do not pay attention to him.
Attention | Character | Despair | Men | Mind | People | Truth |
Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe
The only person who can have “everything” is one who can be satisfied with his minimum requirements of food and clothing, and the Creator is the center of his world.
The regeneration of a sinner is an evidence of power in the highest sphere - moral nature; with the highest prerogative - to change nature; and operating to the highest result - not to create originally, which is great; but to create anew, which is greater.
The first real mental illumination I remember to have experienced was when I saw that the universe exists in each of its individual atoms - that is, the universe is the result of a few simple processes infinitely repeated. When a drop of water has been mathematically measured, every principle will have been used which would be called form in the measurement of the heavens. All life on the globe is sustained by digestion and assimilation; when by voluntary and traumatic action these stop death follows. The history of an individual mind is the history of the race. Know one thing in its properties and relations and you will know all things.
Action | Character | Death | History | Individual | Life | Life | Mind | Race | Universe | Will |
Rona Barrett born Rhona Bernstein, Mrs. William Trowbridge
The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.
Character | Individual | Soul |