This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Selfishness, if but reasonably tempered with wisdom, is not such an evil trait.
Evil | Selfishness | Wisdom |
More people praise the Bible than read it, more read it than understand it, and more understand it than follow it.
There must be some supreme, universal design. Each of us comes to life and stays in the world for predestined period. Some leave forever, sometimes without a trace; others stay for a long time, both in life and in memory. We remain longest - we make a difference - when we manage to act not for ourselves but for others. It is possible to create good and evil. The greatest and most important thing a person can do is to understand that where good exists, evil also resides; what’s more, one must strive to stay on the side of righteousness, doing one’s best to promote good in the world. Only you can make this choice. You alone will be held responsible - by other people, by your progeny and by history.
Choice | Design | Evil | Good | History | Important | Life | Life | Memory | People | Righteousness | Time | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it.
Character | Childhood | Evil | Freedom | Gold | Mankind | Suspicion | Wisdom | Happiness |
Sannazaro, fully Jacopo Sannazaro NULL
There is no evil in the world without a remedy.
War mends but few, and spoils multitudes; it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder; and these crimes must be ministered to by their lesser relatives, by covetousness and anger and pride and revenge, and heats of blood, and wilder liberty, and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief.
Anger | Evil | Liberty | Murder | Pride | Revenge | War | Wisdom |
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life; because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of love, and, therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite would be to destroy the spirit utterly.
Character | Death | Destroy | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Love | Means | Spirit | Wisdom | Wise |
I cannot be certain not to meet with evil company, but I will be careful not to keep with evil company. I would willingly sort myself with such as should either teach or learn goodness; and if my companion cannot make me better, nor I him good, I will rather leave him ill than he shall make me worse.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom.
Dignity | Evil | Freedom | God | Good | Happy | Man | Price | Suffering | Wickedness | World |
Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
Since all justice is rightness, the justice, which brings praise to the one who preserves it, is in nowise in any except rational beings… This justice is not rightness of knowledge, or rightness of action, but rightness of will.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The good may prove to be a hidden form of evil. The evil may prove to be a new and not yet recognized form of good.