This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The sound and proper exercise of the imagination may be made to contribute to the cultivation of all that is virtuous and estimable in the human character.
Character | Cultivation | Imagination | Sound |
Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning obscures the luster of every accomplishment and sinks us into contempt. The path of falsehood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from sincerity, it is not in our power to stop; one artifice unavoidably leads on to another, till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our snare.
Accomplishment | Age | Appearance | Artifice | Character | Contempt | Falsehood | Future | Learning | Old age | Perfidy | Power | Shame | Sincerity | Youth | Youth | Old |
Next to sound judgment, diamonds are pearls are the rarest things to be met with.
Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure. He who is a stranger to it may possess, but cannot enjoy; for it is labor only which gives relish to pleasure. It is the appointed vehicle of every good to man. It is the indispensable condition of possessing a sound mind in a sound body.
Body | Character | Good | Improvement | Indispensable | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Pleasure | Sound |
Hypocrisy is folly. It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of what he is not.
Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes - vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.
Affectation | Appearance | Applause | Censure | Character | Hypocrisy | Order |
Corrupt as men are, they are yet so much the creatures of reflection, and so strongly addicted to sentiments of right and wrong, that their attachment to a public cause can rarely be secured, or their animosity be kept alive, unless their understandings are engaged by some appearance of truth and rectitude.
Appearance | Cause | Character | Men | Public | Reflection | Right | Truth | Wrong |
He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.
Character | Ideas | Language | Little | Man | Sound | Thought | Will | Words | Thought |
Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.
Appearance | Character | Dignity | Intelligence | Perseverance | Silence | Wisdom |
It is in life that we have to ‘perfect’ ourselves. If we limit ‘this life’ to one single journey between birth and death there is not enough time. People give up trying, just because of this appearance of things. They do not bend the life round in a circle, but leave the whole matter to the ‘hereafter’. We cannot grasp that beyond the ‘end’ lies the beginning... Beyond our life we meet - our life. We cannot turn in any other direction!
Appearance | Beginning | Birth | Character | Death | Enough | Journey | Life | Life | People | Time |
What is man’s life compared to the life of the whole Universe? If man’s life is nothing but a minute part of the life of the whole world if he inserted into the cycle of all the Universe so that his appearance and reappearance is dependent upon the gigantic cosmic processes that belong to the Universe, what chance has he of altering anything in his destiny?
Appearance | Chance | Character | Destiny | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Universe | World |
J. C. Penney, formally James Cash Penney
Success in business does not depend upon genius. Any young man of ordinary intelligence who is normally sound and not afraid to work should succeed in spite of obstacles and handicaps if he plays the game fairly and keeps everlastingly at it.
Business | Character | Genius | Intelligence | Man | Sound | Success | Work | Business | Afraid |
Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.
Appearance | Character | Envy | Inferiority | Passion |
I know of but one remedy against the fear of death that is effectual and that will stand the test of a sick-bed, or of a sound mind - that is, a good life, a clear conscience, an honest heart, and a well-ordered conversation; to carry the thoughts of dying men about us, and so to live before we die as we shall wish we had when we come to it.
Character | Conscience | Conversation | Death | Fear | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Sound | Will |
If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.
Care | Character | Heart | Man | Men | Mind | Position | Quiet | Rest | Sound |