This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our actions are judged good or evil according to our intentions.
Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
It is the evil that lives in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.
Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach
Who is a righteous man and who is an evil man? Many people think a righteous man is one who does not transgress, and the evil person is one who constantly transgresses. But even the very righteous also transgress and even the very wicked perform good deeds. The essential difference between the two is that a righteous person tries to overcome his desires to do wrong and the evil person does not.
Character | Deeds | Evil | Good | Man | People | Wrong | Think |
Georgii Litichevsky Semenovich
Life means love. We are here for love. Only love is real and everything is real thanks to love. We are nomads wandering through illusionary space. How to make it real? Only by destroying limits that separate us from others. No violence, no attempts at escape can help, only love. Too often love is more painful than joyful. The instances of love are much shorter than the periods during which we wait for love to emerge. The meaning of living is mastering the art of waiting.
Art | Character | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Means | Space | Waiting | Art |
Life really doesn’t have much meaning without death. Death gives each moment its value. It makes each instant precious and meaningful. When you understand how valuable each moment is, you begin to act accordingly.
There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.
Attainment | Beginning | Character | Choice | Darkness | Desire | Evil | Feelings | Good | Heart | Light | Man | Means | Possessions | Right | Understanding | Will | Wrong | Zeal | Vice |
Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to struggle toward it.
Attainment | Character | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Love | Patience | Struggle | Sympathy | Wisdom | Wise |
He that waits for repentance waits for that which cannot be had as long as it is waited for. It is absurd for a man to wait for that which he himself has to do.
Absurd | Character | Man | Repentance |
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.
Character | Esteem | Meaning | Preference |
Some people ask why the righteous suffer in this world. To a great extent the question is based on a misconception. Often, the criteria people use to judge whether another person is living a good life or not is by his financial standard of living... A truly righteous person by definition lives a happy life. Such a person has internalized the awareness that all the occurrences in his life are for the good, and he has satisfaction from his life. His life has meaning and purpose. His whole being is focused on spiritual elevation. He deeply feels that the good life is to fulfill the will of the Almighty and hence he feels great pleasure in the good deeds that he performs.
Awareness | Character | Deeds | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Will | World | Deeds | Awareness |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Vice leaves repentance in the soul like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and hot of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin.
Character | Reason | Repentance | Soul |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The oldest and best known evil is always more tolerable than a new and unexperienced one.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.
Character | Esteem | Evil | Malice | Pity | Stupidity | Unhappiness | Think |