This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
The character of a people, like the character of a person, should not be measured by its worst, but rather by its best; and reckoned by that rule and by that standard.
Conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minute’s’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not differ sensibly from a straight line.
Character | Conversation | Enough | Little | People | Intellect |
Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. Your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.
Activity is the presence of function - character is the record of function.
A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents, it is not created by external advantages, it is no necessary appendage of birth, wealth, talents or station; but it is the result of one’s own endeavors.
God may be worshipped and contemplated in any of his aspects. But to persist in worshipping only one aspect to the exclusion of all the rest is to run into grave spiritual peril... The best that can be said for ritualistic legalism is that it improves conduct. It does little, however, to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness... The complete transformation of consciousness, which is “enlightenment,” “deliverance,” “salvation,” comes only when God is thought of as the perennial Philosophy affirms Him to be - immanent as well as transcendent, supra-personal as well as personal - and when religious practices are adapted to this conception.
Character | Conduct | Consciousness | Enlightenment | God | Grave | Little | Nothing | Peril | Philosophy | Rest | Salvation | Thought | God | Thought |
Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works. It is better to be praised by one's own works than by the words of another.
The manner of giving shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself.