This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Freedom does not mean the right to do whatever we please, but rather to do whatever we ought... The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power.
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
Character | Good nature | Good | Nature | Sense |
William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, fully Field Marshal Sir William Joseph "Bill" Slim
When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.
That charity alone endures which flows from a sense of duty and a hope in God. this is the charity that treads in secret those paths of misery from which all but the lowest of human wretches have fled; this is that charity which no labor can weary, no ingratitude detach, no horror disgust; that toils, that pardons, that suffers; that is seen by no man, and honored by no man, but, like the great laws of Nature, does the work of God in silence, and looks to a future and better world for its reward.
Better | Character | Charity | Duty | Future | God | Hope | Ingratitude | Labor | Looks | Man | Nature | Reward | Sense | Silence | Work | World | God |
The great highroad of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and the work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.
Character | Effort | Right | Spirit | Success | Will | Work | Old |
Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also.
Action | Better | Character | Corruption | Death |
Lewis Schwellenbach, fully Lewis Baxter Schwellenbach
Every right has its responsibilities. Like the right itself, these responsibilities stem from no man-made law, but from the very nature of man and society. The security, progress and welfare of one group is measured finally in the security, progress and welfare of all mankind.
Character | Man | Mankind | Nature | Progress | Right | Security |
We usually fall asleep in our relationships... not because we are tired of love but so we can dream of new relationships. Life, however, is a work in progress, and love's challenge is not to see people as they once were but as they might be. People who grow old can also grow love.
Challenge | Character | Life | Life | Love | People | Progress | Work | Old |
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Self-expression can be wrong as well as right... When self-expression is identified with irrational surrender to lower instincts, it ends by making the person a slave to those passions. Self-denial is not a renunciation of freedom; it is rather the taming of what is savage and base in our nature for what is higher and better. It is a release from imprisonment by our lusts and passions.
Better | Character | Ends | Freedom | Nature | Right | Self | Self-denial | Surrender | Wrong |
Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world.
Character | Conscience | Good | Human nature | Individual | Men | Nature | Order | Power | Qualities | Rule | Society | World |
The roads to freedom do not run through the lands out yonder, but rather through our inner selves.
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
Absolute | Character | Contentment | Immortality | Man | Nature | Rest | Spirit |