This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When people say to me: "How do you do so many things?" I often answer them, without meaning to be cruel: "How to you do so little?" It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever."
Character | Confidence | Little | Meaning | People |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.
Arrogance | Character | Prosperity | Receive | Wealth |
Affliction is a school of virtue: it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.
Affliction | Character | Confidence | Virtue | Virtue |
Pierre Claude Boiste, fully Pierre Claude Victor Boiste
He who has lost confidence can lose nothing more.
Character | Confidence | Nothing |
To rejoice in another’s prosperity is to give content to your own lot; to mitigate another’s grief is to alleviate or dispel your own.
Character | Grief | Prosperity |
Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends.
Character | Prosperity | Wisdom | Friendship |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
On this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it. Our life is a continual combat... We must pass on unmoved, while temptations rage around us, as the traveler, overtaken by a storm, simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and pushes on more vigorously toward his destined home.
Character | Earth | Life | Life | Pride | Prosperity | Rage | Temptation |
Esteem cannot be where there is no confidence, and there can be no confidence where there is no respect.
Character | Confidence | Esteem | Respect |
Calamity and Prosperity are the Touchstones of Integrity.
Calamity | Character | Integrity | Prosperity |
Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.
Aims | Candor | Character | Confidence | Ends | Fear | Freedom | Life | Life | Men | Security | Self | Society | Society |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself. As to the pure all things are pure, even so to the impure all things are impure.
Character | Confidence | Evil | Man |
We are unable to explain either the prosperity of the wicked or the afflictions of the righteous.
Character | Prosperity |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Actually, you will never have more potential for prosperity and wholeness than you have now.
Character | Prosperity | Wholeness | Will |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
The key to prosperity is the realization that prosperity doesn’t come by getting more. It comes by giving more... You do not deprive someone else when you prosper, as the Source is unlimited.
Character | Giving | Prosperity |