This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It should be the work of a genuine and noble patriotism to raise the life of the nation to the level of its privileges; to harmonize its general practice with its abstract principles; to reduce to actual facts the ideals of its institutions; to elevate instruction into knowledge; to deepen knowledge into wisdom; to render knowledge and wisdom complete in righteousness; and to make the love of country perfect in the love of man.
Abstract | Ideals | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Man | Patriotism | Practice | Principles | Righteousness | Wisdom | Work | Instruction |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
[Recipe for happiness] Work and love.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.
Achievement | Belief | Civilization | Existence | Faith | Illusion | Instinct | Perfection | Present | Wisdom | Work |
People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work on us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will. If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries there would be but a small balance in my favor.
Balance | Energy | Originality | People | Strength | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work | World |
Keep clear of personalities in conversation. Talk of things, objects, thoughts. The smallest minds occupy themselves with persons. Do not needlessly report ill of others. As far as possible, dwell on the good side of human beings. There are family boards where a constant process of depreciating, assigning motives, and cutting up character goes forward. They are not pleasant places. One who is healthy does not wish to dine at a dissecting table. There is evil enough in man, God knows. But it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all. Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity.
Character | Charity | Conversation | Enough | Evil | Family | Gentleness | God | Good | Man | Mission | Motives | Wisdom | Woman | God |
There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.
Without my work in natural science I should never have known human beings as they really are. In no other activity can one come so close to direct perception and clear thought, or realize so fully the errors of the senses, the mistakes of the intellect, the weakness and greatnesses of human character.
Character | Perception | Science | Thought | Weakness | Wisdom | Work |
God then, is the source of all things; the Aeon is the power of God; and the work of the Aeon is the Kosmos which never came into being, but is ever coming into being, by the action of the Aeon, and that which olds the universe together is the Aeon.
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge.
Instinct | Intelligence | Knowledge | Wisdom | Work |