This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
Knowledge and action... are only two aspects of one and the same faculty... There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them.
Action | Character | Instinct | Intelligence | Knowledge | Will |
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
We are free when our acts spring from our whole personality... Our character is still ourselves.
Character | Personality |
Tristan Bernard, born Paul Bernard
Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that's all.
Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, born Ferdinand Lewis "Lew" Alcinder, Jr.
The reason we’re here is to exercise personal responsibility, to evolve the higher self and to influence that development in others.
Character | Influence | Reason | Responsibility | Self |
There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
It is indifference which is the cause of most of our unhappiness. Indifference to religion, to the happiness of others, and to the precious gift of freedom, and the wide liberty that is the inheritance of all in a free land. Are we our "Brother's Keeper"? We certainly are! If we had no regard for others' feelings or fortune, we would grow cold and indifferent to life itself. Bound up with selfishness, we could not hope for the success that could easily be ours.
Cause | Character | Feelings | Fortune | Freedom | Hope | Indifference | Inheritance | Land | Liberty | Life | Life | Regard | Religion | Selfishness | Success | Unhappiness | Happiness |
At first the throne is set up for the liar, but at last his lies shall find him out, and they shall spit in his face.
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 |
A person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
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.
J. Ogden Armour, fully Jonathan Ogden Armour
Whoever admits that he is too busy to improve his methods has acknowledged himself to be at the end of his rope. And that is always the saddest predicament which anyone can get into.
Cheerfulness is the friend and helper of all good graces, and the absence of it is certainly a vice.
Absence | Character | Cheerfulness | Friend | Good |
Austonius, fully Decimus Magnus Ausonius
A favor tardily bestowed is no favor; for a favor quickly granted is a more agreeable favor.
Henry Christopher "H.C." Bailey
Indecision and hesitation are the weakness of a careful nature always intent on the saving of face and losing it thereby.
Character | Indecision | Nature | Weakness |
The absurd man is he who never changes.
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.
Yehezkel Abramsky, aka Reb Chatzkel Abramsky
View each day as a page in a book of your autobiography.
Enthusiasm is a kind of faith that has been set afire.
Character | Enthusiasm | Faith | Wisdom |
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.