This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Outward judgment often fails, inward justice never.
To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul’s expression is not in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself; and this, this alone, is Happiness.
Action | Character | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Happiness |
It is a kindness to refuse gently what you intend to deny.
Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL
Vice, the opposite of virtue, shows us more clearly what virtue is. Justice becomes more obvious when we have injustice to compare it to. Many such things are proved by their contraries.
Character | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Virtue | Virtue |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
The less gratitude you receive for doing a kind act, the greater the value of the act. True kindness is when we do not receive anything in return for what we do.
The fundamental principle of all morals, on the basis of which I have reasoned in all my writings... is that man is naturally good, loving justice and order; that there is absolutely no original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right.
Character | Good | Heart | Justice | Man | Nature | Order | Right |
Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are centered on self; all our instincts are at first directed to our own preservation and our own welfare. Thus the first notion of justice springs not from what we owe to others, but from what is due to us.
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.
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 |
All the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind, but we are so foolishly indifferent that we are never in earnest in the matter of kindness. We want to topple a great load over, and yet will not avail ourselves of a lever which would multiply our power a hundredfold.
Character | Heart | Kindness | Man | Mankind | Power | Will | World |