This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lend on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there by anything in our character worthy of imitation.
Beauty | Body | Character | Courtesy | Example | Grace | Imitation | Science | Time | Instruction | Beauty |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
Not by age but by character is wisdom attained.
In the destiny of every moral being there is an object more worthy of God than happiness. It is character. And the grand aim of man's creation is the development of grand character - and grand character is, by its very nature, the product of probationary discipline.
Character | Destiny | Discipline | God | Man | Nature | Object | God |
A man's own character is the arbiter of his fortune.
Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and angels know of us.
Anthony Meredith Quinton, Baron Quinton
The idea of soul, as a pure ego or mental substance, persists tenaciously in philosophy. I have argued that it cannot satisfactorily discharge the various tasks for which it has been recruited. The body, with marginal, speculative and dependent exceptions, is all that is required to individuate experiences and to supply then with an owner. An unobservable mental substance cannot individuate and provides a merely formal, because wholly inscrutable, solution to the problem of ownership. It is equally, and even more obviously, inept as an explanation of the identity of a person through time, which rests, not on the body, but on the complex of a person’s character and memories, related by continuity.
I have learned by experience that no man’s character can be eventually injured but by his own acts.
Character | Experience | Man |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
Each person is a one time phenomenon, an occurrence that has never been before and will never be again. You have a unique blend of character traits and personality. You are unique in your particular family constellation, born in a specific time of history and in a specific environment. This uniqueness gives you great importance. Only you can accomplish your unique life tasks.
Character | Family | History | Life | Life | Personality | Time | Unique | Will |
Strength of character is not measured by who we support but by knowing we all lean on one another.
Trifles discover a character more than actions of importance.
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Every individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.
Character | Contradiction | Individual | Right | Self | Wrong |