This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We cannot do evil to others without doing it to ourselves.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himsefl without love he gives away his passions and coarse pleasuures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himsefl. The man wholies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone.
Character | Distinguish | Love | Lying | Man | Men | Order | Respect | Truth | Respect |
Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.
Action | Anger | Character | Fear | Hate | Mind | Self | Thought | Thought |
Jealousy: that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.
All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.
Character | Frailties | Friend | Looks | Love | Men | Will | Friends |
Who stimulates others to do good is greater than the doer.
There is nothing to do with men but to love them; to contemplate their virtues with admiration, their faults with pity and forbearance, and their injuries with forgiveness.
Admiration | Character | Forbearance | Forgiveness | Love | Men | Nothing | Pity |
How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!
Character | Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Love | Mystery | Teach | Truth |
Realists do not fear the results of their study.
There is no sorrow I have though more about than that, to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.
Ability | Character | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Right | Wisdom |
Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings; but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us - the ties that have made others depend on us - and would cut them in two.
There is a vein of inconsistency in every woman’s heart, within whose portals love hath entered.
Character | Heart | Inconsistency | Love | Woman |