This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
It is in periods of apparent disaster, during the sufferings of whole generations, that the greatest improvement in human character has been effected.
Character | Improvement |
There are many seasons in a man’s life - and the more exalted and responsible his position, the more frequently do these seasons recur - when the voice of duty and the dictates of feeling are opposed to each other; and it is only the weak and the wicked who yield that obedience to the selfish impulses of the heart which is due to reason and honor.
Character | Duty | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Man | Obedience | Position | Reason |
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
Illusion and self-deception stand in the way of an honest, penetrating and fearless self-appraisal. Though it would appear that we have access to the innermost core of our individual being, and that there is nothing in the world with which we are on more intimate terms than our own self, the self remains an elusive object of knowledge and understanding.
Character | Illusion | Individual | Knowledge | Nothing | Object | Self | Self-deception | Understanding | World |
The improvement of the mind improves the heart and corrects the understanding.
Character | Heart | Improvement | Mind | Understanding |
S'rîmad Bhâgavatam, aka Bhâgavata Purâna or Bhāgavata
Learn to look with an equal eye upon all beings, seeing the one Self in all.
More than all, and above all Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.
Character | Control | Example | Influence | Men | Present | Self |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
A man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examinations, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not that which he thinks and says and does.
Character | Consciousness | Greatness | Life | Life | Man | Obedience | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Rule | Self | Think |
He who beholds in all beings in the self and the self in all beings, he never turns away from it. When to a man who understands, the self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?
Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke
When a person who was self conscious only, enters into cosmic consciousness - he knows without learning certain things... that the universe is not a dead machine but a living presence... that in its essence and tendency it is infinitely good... that individual existence is continuous beyond what is called death.
Character | Consciousness | Death | Existence | Good | Individual | Learning | Self | Universe |
Benevolence is not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. It is a business with men as they are, and with human life as drawn by the rough hand of experience. It is a duty which you must perform at the call of principle; though there be no voice of eloquence to give splendor to your exertions, and no music of poetry to lead your willing footsteps through the bowers of enchantment. It is not the impulse of high and ecstatic emotion. It is an exertion of principle. :You must go to the poor man’s cottage, though no verdure flourish around it, the gentleness of its murmurs. If you look for the romantic simplicity of fiction you will be disappointed; but it is your duty to persevere in spite of every discouragement. Benevolence is not merely a feeling but a principle; not a dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge in, but a business for the hand to execute.
Benevolence | Business | Character | Duty | Experience | Gentleness | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Men | Music | Poetry | Simplicity | Truth | Will | Business |