This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, also known as Ben Ezra or Abenezra
The essence of all precepts is to make the heart upright.
It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination.
Character | Imagination | Passion | Rule | Wit |
A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles.
Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.
Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |
An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second.
David Kimchi, aka Hebrew acronym as the RaDaK
He whose heart is closed will not be benefited by open eyes.
Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva
There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity.
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
Character | Doubt | Heart | Imagination | Mind | Mistrust | Panic | Will |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am capable of grasping god objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast to the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.
Character | Contradiction | Faith | God | Individual | Passion | Risk | Uncertainty | God |
Education is not a process that continues for some years and then ends. Education has only one sovereign purpose: to prepare one for more education. All else is subsidiary to this. Education should create hungers - spiritual, moral, and aesthetic hungers for value... The gift of education will be a heart that is whole.
Aesthetic | Character | Education | Ends | Heart | Purpose | Purpose | Will |
Each heart is a world. You find all within yourself that you find without. To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.