This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Helping is less a task-oriented activity than an indication of a way of living and being.
Beautiful is the activity that works for good, and the stillness that waits for good; blessed the self-sacrifice that waits for good; blessed the self-sacrifice of the one, and the self-forgetfulness of the other.
Character | Forgetfulness | Good | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Blessed |
Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond
Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.
Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |
Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.
To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion.
Deliverance is out of time into eternity, and is achieved by obedience and docility to the eternal Nature of Things. We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a “state of grace.” All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine Reality. We are, as it were, aeolian harps, endowed with the power either to expose themselves to the wind of the Spirit or to shut themselves away from it.
Character | Docility | Eternal | Eternity | Existence | Free will | Grace | Nature | Obedience | Order | Power | Reality | Self | Spirit | Time | Will |
All ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices, and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men’s charity or their generosity.
Care | Character | Charity | Generosity | Indifference | Industry | Luxury | Men | Nothing | Sloth |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person... Love is an attitude which determines how we relate to the world... Love is an activity of our spirit... Loving others is impossible until we love ourselves.
Character | Love | Relationship | Spirit | World |
Adoration is an activity of the loving, but still separate individuality. Contemplation is the state of union with the divine Ground of all being. The highest prayer is the most passive. Inevitably; for the less there is of self, the more there is of God.
Character | Contemplation | God | Individuality | Prayer | Self | Contemplation |
Alberto Moravia, Pen name of Alberto Pincherle
Life is a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good.