This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.
Character | Honor | Necessity | Obligation |
It is a kindness to refuse gently what you intend to deny.
The light of the understanding, humility kindleth and pride covereth.
Character | Humility | Light | Pride | Understanding |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
The less gratitude you receive for doing a kind act, the greater the value of the act. True kindness is when we do not receive anything in return for what we do.
We grow with the years more fragile in body but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
Body | Character | Conscience |
Phyllis V. Schlemmer and Dalden Jenkins
Our bodies and egos are vehicles by which we can access the experience of physical living. As a key ingredient in an automobile is its driver, so the key ingredient in a person is soul. Without active alignment to soul - a person is lost - the fundamental meaning of life is missing. Planet Earth is a sort of “soul-field”, a body of experience with a characteristic flavor, which individual souls enter to learn, evolve and serve. Perhaps it is a Hall of Mirrors at a fairground, where we see ourselves reflected, expanded and compressed in so many different ways.
Body | Character | Earth | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul |
The lusts and greeds of the Body scandalize the Soul; but it has to come to heel.
All life is initiation. Each experience, each act, deed, especially thoughts, are a portion of initiation. Initiation then is the process whereby the entity - the soul force, is given the opportunity to develop spiritually. This means, that when the soul chooses to improve itself - to move towards a greater light, the soul body so changes its vibration as to remove from its spiritual fabric those attachments detrimental to its path upward.
Body | Character | Experience | Force | Life | Life | Light | Means | Opportunity | Soul |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Self-control is promoted by humility. Pride is a fruitful source of uneasiness. It keeps the mind in disquiet. Humility is the antidote to this evil.
Character | Control | Evil | Humility | Mind | Pride | Self | Self-control |
Even though we personally should do what we can to flee from honor, we still have an obligation to treat other people with honor and respect.
Character | Honor | Obligation | People | Respect |
All the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind, but we are so foolishly indifferent that we are never in earnest in the matter of kindness. We want to topple a great load over, and yet will not avail ourselves of a lever which would multiply our power a hundredfold.
Character | Heart | Kindness | Man | Mankind | Power | Will | World |
John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
Charity should be the habit of our estimates; kindness of our feelings; benevolence of our affections; cheerfulness of our social intercourse; generosity of our living; improvement of our progress; prayer of our desires; fidelity of our sex-examination; being and doing good of our entire life.
Benevolence | Character | Charity | Cheerfulness | Feelings | Fidelity | Generosity | Good | Habit | Improvement | Kindness | Life | Life | Prayer | Progress |
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride.