This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Heartlessness and fascination, in about equal quantities, constitute the receipt for forming the character of coquette.
Exaggerated respect for athletics, an excess of coarse impressions brought about by the technical discoveries of recent years, the increased severity of the struggle for existence due to the economic crisis, the brutalization of political life: all these factors are hostile to the ripening of the character and the desire for real culture, and stamp our age as barbarous, materialistic and superficial.
Age | Athletics | Character | Culture | Desire | Excess | Existence | Life | Life | Respect | Struggle | Respect |
If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.
J. L. M. Curry, fully Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry
A state to prosper, must be built on foundations of moral character, and, this character is the principal element of its strength, and the only guaranty of its permanence and prosperity.
Character | Prosperity | Strength |
Ilya Ehrenburg, fully Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg
Knowledge has outstripped character development, and the young today are given an education rather than an upbringing.
The influences of little things are as real, and as constantly about us, as the air we breathe or the light by which we see. These are the small - the often invisible - the almost unthought of strands, which are inweaving and twisting by millions, to bind us to character - to good or evil here, and to heaven or hell hereafter.
Education begins with life. Before we are aware the foundations of character are laid, and subsequent teaching avails but little to remove or alter them... If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Character | Education | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Man |
Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.
James T. Farrell, fully James Thomas Farrell
When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.
One situation only of the married state is excluded from pleasure: and that is, a state of indifference.
Character | Indifference | Pleasure |
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.
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.