This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Prejudice is not held against people because they have evil qualities. Evil qualities are imputed to people because prejudices are held against them." - Marshall Wingfield
"Giving of yourself, learning to be tolerant, giving recognition and approval to others, remaining flexible enough to mature and learn - yields happiness, harmony, contentment and productivity. These are the qualities of a rich life, the bounteous harvest of getting along with people." - Jack C. Yewell
"Three outstanding qualities make for success: judgment, industry, health. And the greatest of these is judgment." - William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, aka Lord Beaverbrook
"We are always looking for pleasure, frantically seeking happiness in many ways, and totally missing the simplest, most fundamental pleasure, which actually is also the greatest pleasure: just being here. When we are really present, the presence itself is made out of fullness, contentment and blissful pleasure... Happiness, value, and pleasure are not he result of anything. These qualities are part of our fundamental nature." - Ali Hameed Almaas
"When we come to die, we shall be alone. From our worldly possessions we shall be about to part. Worldly friends - the friends drawn to us by our position, our wealth, or our social qualities, will leave us as we enter the dark valley. From those bound to us by stronger ties - our kindred, our loved ones, children, brothers, sister, and from those not less dear to us who have been made our friends because they and we are the friends of the same Savior - from them also we must part. Yet not all will leave us. There is One who “sticketh closer than a brother” - One who having loved His own which are in the world loves them to the end." - Albert Barnes
"He that will live in this world must be endued with the three rare qualities of dissimulation, equivocation, and mental reservation." - Aphra Behn
"War, like other situations of danger and of change, calls for the exertion of admirable intellectual qualities and great virtues, and it is only by dwelling on these, and keeping out of sight the sufferings and sorrows, and all the crimes and evils that follow in its train, that it has its glory in the eyes of man." - William Cullen Bryant
"Decision of character is one of the most important of human qualities, philosophically considered. Speculation, knowledge, is not the chief end of man; it is action." - Jacob Burnap
"Those two fatal words, Mind and Thine..."Do not forget, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that there are two kinds of beauty, one being of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul is revealed through intelligence, modesty, right conduct, generosity, and good breeding, all of which qualities may exist in an ugly man; and when one's gaze is fixed upon beauty of this sort and not upon that of the body, love is usually born suddenly and violently."" - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"Into what boundless life does education admit us. Every truth gained through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being - positively enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot weaken or destroy." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"(Mathematical Division of Things, is never made in Minima; but Things may be Physically divided into their least parts; as when Concrete Matter is so far divided that it departs into Physical Monades, as it was in the first State of its Materiality...) Moreover the consideration of this Infinite Divisibility of every thing, into parts always less, is no unnecessary or unprofitable Theory, but a thing of great moment; viz. that thereby may be understood the Reasons and Causes of Things; and how all Creatures from the highest to the lowest are inseparably united with one another, by means of Subtiler Parts interceding or coming in between, which are the Emanations of one Creature into another, by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in Creatures: And if these things be well understood of any one, he may easily see into the most secret and hidden Causes of Things, which ignorant Men call occult Qualities." - Anne Conway
"The happy gift of being agreeable seems to consist not in one, but in an assemblage of talents tending to communicate delight; and how many are there, who, by easy manners, sweetness of temper, and a variety of other undefinable qualities, possess the power of pleasing without any visible effort, without the aids of wit, wisdom, or learning, nay, as it should seem in their defiance; and this without appearing even to know that they possess it." - Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough
"The universal of an atom containing emptiness and existence. This means that the atom has no intrinsic nature, so it is empty; yet its illusory characteristics are evident, so it is existent. Indeed, because illusory form has no essence, it must be no different from emptiness, and real emptiness contains qualities permeating to the surface of existence. Seeing that form is empty produces great wisdom and not dwelling in birth-and-death; seeing that emptiness is form produces great compassion and not dwelling in nirvana. When form and emptiness are nondual, compassion and wisdom are not different; only this is true seeing." - Fazang, also Fa-Tsang or Fāzàng NULL
"Politicians... rise predominantly from... the "lower middle class"; most are self-made men... ; most depend on their political jobs for their livelihood and most have little time, inclination, or opportunity for adult education; hence the dominating qualities of so many are greed, vulgarity, attention to special interest, avarice, and selfishness." - John Gunther
"I regard it as the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self-denial, and, above all, compassion." - Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
"The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity, in a girl it is boldness. The two sexes have a tendency to approach, and each assumes the qualities of the other." - Victor Hugo
"Self-government requires qualities of self-denial and restraint." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
"Taste is the fundamental quality which sums up all other qualities. It is the ne plus ultra of the intelligence." - Comte de Lautréamont, pen name for Isadore Lucsen Ducasse
"Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in the art of conversation." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"One cannot have faith without optimism. Faith and hope are inseparable. Depression is a great obstacle in the spiritual life and we must strive to conquer it... Cheerfulness is one of the essential spiritual qualities we must guard ourselves against dejection, self-denunciation, or even feeling a little down-hearted... Dejection invariably distorts our vision - it magnifies our troubles." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"What the world needs is a fusion of the sciences and the humanities. The humanities express the symbolic, poetic and prophetic qualities of the human spirit. Without them we would not be conscious of our history; we would lose our aspirations and the graces of expression that move men's hearts. The sciences express the creative urge in man to construct a universe which is comprehensible in terms of the human intellect. Without them, mankind would find itself bewildered in a world of natural forces beyond comprehension, victims of ignorance, superstition and fear." - Isidor Isaac Rabi
"The true grandeur of nations is in those qualities which constitute the true greatness of the individual." - Charles Sumner
"Eventually we'll have to confront the fact that world suffering is the result of ill-conceived thoughts taking form through misdirected action. If we're going to survive as a species, we must relinquish - to unprecedented levels, - qualities such as greed, hatred, and delusion. In other words, our very survival depends on accelerated levels of psychological and spiritual maturation." - Roger N. Walsh
"Of all the qualities of a theologian must possess, a devotional spirit is the chief. For the soul is larger than the mind, and the religious emotions lay hold on the truths to which they are related, on many sides at once. A powerful understanding, on the other hand, seizes on single points, and however enlarged in its own sphere, is never safe from its narrowness of view." - Henry Benjamin Whipple
"Here is the test of wisdom, wisdom is not finally tested in schools, wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"All our distinctions are accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it is so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility." - Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
"One who praises you for qualities you lack, will next be found blaming you for faults not yours." - Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, simply known as Ali NULL
"We live in a biochemical, neurophysiological, resonant quantum soup. If this is true, the responsibility for what we have for our inner life is enormous, and extends far beyond one’s own personal and spiritual development. Whatever our inner experience might be in terms of love and passion, hate and greed, abundance and longing, or any other human qualities may well not be ours alone." - Jeanne Achterberg
"In the past, traditional art was based on making manifest what is enduring in man, like love, jealously, hatred, envy and greed… Today art has to look again at these unchanging qualities, because society is no longer unchanging. It is up to art today to show us what has become of these unchanging qualities in the world which is moving and changing." - Tawfiq al-Hakim or Tawfik el-Hakim
"The happy, self-unfolded people are those who, with a will to believe in the world and the life within, have found that the secret of really getting the most out of life is to make the most of the qualities that are innately their own." - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
"You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts – purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any personality except as the fulfillment of these two qualities – the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty." - Phillips Brooks
"Whether or not you decide to emulate that which you have come to understand through empathetic identification, you will never be quite the same again. In learning to think and to feel, to understand and to value more like another you will have grown in your own self-understanding and in your capacity to speak and interact with others. You, and that which you are now able to embrace, may well find in one another nurture, respect, protection, and enrichment. It is in such qualities of living that true meaning will be encountered, however tentative and fluctuating that meaning may be. It is in the very midst of the flux of the meaningful that its perpetuation and its renewal is to be found." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends." - Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I believe the purpose of life is happiness. In today’s world being happy is inseparable from being responsible. We need to temper the extremes of our personal nature so that we can realize oneness with the universe. We must keep our destructive qualities from outweighing our constructive qualities." - Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL
"Six essential qualities that are the key to success: sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity." - William Menninger, fully William Claire Menninger
"The number of different objects in the world is infinite, while the qualities they possess are limited. These qualities are therefore like the letters of the alphabet which can make up an indefinite number of words. If we present the children with objects exhibiting each of these qualities separately [and “classified in an orderly way”], this is like giving them an alphabet for their explorations, a key to the doors of knowledge." - Maria Montessori
"Deity cannot be understood through a knowledge of timeless qualities of goodness and perfection, but only by sensing the living acts of God’s concern and his dynamic attentiveness in relation to man, who is the passionate object of his interest." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The most important results in daily life are to be obtained, not through the exercise of extraordinary powers, such as genius and intellect, but through the energetic use of simple means and ordinary qualities, with which nearly all human individuals have been more or less endowed." - Samuel Smiles
"It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to a person's extra-ordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy them." - Anthony Storr
"Science knows the qualities of electricity, but not its real essence." - Mahmoud Mohammed Taha
"Traditionally, the relation between the divine and the human is that the divine confers meaning on our finite and otherwise petty lives. The idea… is that the divine has qualities that are meaningful because of our possible response to them. In other words, rather than starting from the divine and understanding the meaning of our lives in terms of that, we should start from meaningful activities, such as contemplation and worship, that constitute an appropriate response to the divine, and from this, try to make sense of the divine." - Garrett Thomson
"Scientists look for four qualities in theory generally… parsimony: the fewer the units and process used to account for the phenomenon, the better… second, generality: the greater the range of phenomena covered by the model, the more likely it is to be true… Consilence: units and process of a discipline that conform with solidly verified knowledge in other disciplines have proven consistently superior in theory and practice to units and processes that do not conform… Predictiveness: those theories endure that are precise in the predictions they make across phenomena and whose predictions are easiest to test by observation and experiment." -
"The brain constantly searches for meaning, for connections between objects and qualities that cross-cut the senses and provide information about external existence… In order to grasp the human condition, both the genes and culture must be understood, not separately in the traditional manner of science and the humanities, but together, in recognition of the realities of human evolution." -