This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
Character | Love | Personality | Will |
No man or woman has achieved an effective personality who is not self-disciplined. Such discipline must not be an end in itself, but must be directed to the development of resolute Christian character.
Character | Discipline | Man | Personality | Self | Woman |
The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed; and discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error - a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age.
Age | Better | Character | Discussion | Error | Good | Passion | Personality | Truth |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion: a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.
Character | Discernment | Knowledge | Soul |
Without creative personalities able to think and judge independently, the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
Character | Individual | Personality | Society | Wisdom | Society | Think |
Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
To renounce your individuality, to see with another's eyes, to hear with another's ears, to be two and yet but one, to so melt and mingle that you no longer know you are you or another, to constantly absorb and constantly radiate, to reduce earth, sea and sky and all that in them is to a single being so wholly that nothing whatever is withheld, to be prepared at any moment for sacrifice, to double your personality in bestowing it - that is love.
Character | Earth | Individuality | Love | Nothing | Personality | Sacrifice | Wisdom |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Personal relationships are a major cause of unhappiness... Trying to find successful ways of dealing with people according to their personality traits is futile and time-consuming, and it puts the emphasis on outer characteristics rather than where it belongs, which is on the inner... There is an underlying sameness to us all... Operating from the space-time continuum, it is too easy to see others as different from us, to see boundaries, to be exclusive. Operating from our spiritual center, however, is to see others as part of ourselves, to see no boundaries, to be inclusive.
Cause | Character | People | Personality | Space | Time | Unhappiness |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision.
Absolute | Character | Courage | Decision | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Individuality | Life | Life | Personality |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
In every adult there lurks a child - an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole.
Attention | Care | Character | Education | Eternal | Personality | Wants | Child |
In surrender we can both give and receive. Relationships take on a different meaning. We learn to be in someone’s life without being in their dance. A relationship becomes important not because it satisfies personality needs but because it’s the pathway to wholeness.
Character | Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Receive | Relationship | Surrender | Wholeness | Learn |
We are constantly repeating messages in our minds. If they are negative: “I’m a failure,” “The world is an awful place,” “Nothing ever goes right,” we make our lives miserable. We have the ability to consciously make an effort to repeat to our selves positive messages: “I have the ability to keep improving,” “The world contains many wonderful opportunities,” “Everything that happens to me can be used for growth”... Little by little they will have a positive effect on your personality and emotions.
Ability | Character | Effort | Emotions | Failure | Growth | Little | Nothing | Personality | Right | Will | World |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The world is nothing but variety and dissimilarity; but vices are all alike, insomuch as they are all vices.
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, born Frederick Lawrence
If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the main purpose of individual life I would express it as the enlargement of personality. Unless an individual can transcend the limits of class, sex, race, age and creed, his personality remains of necessity to that extent incomplete.
Age | Character | Creed | Individual | Life | Life | Necessity | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Wisdom |
Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL
Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
Maturity is a quality of personality made up of a number of elements. It is stick-to-itiveness, the ability to stick to a job, to work on it and to struggle through it until it is finished, or until one has given all one has in the endeavor. It is the quality or capacity of giving more than is asked or required in a given situation. It is this characteristic that enables others to count on one; thus it is reliability. Persistence is an aspect of maturity; persistence to carry out a a goal in the face of difficulties. Endurance enters into the concept of maturity; the endurance of difficulties, unpleasantness, discomfort, frustration, hardship. The ability to size things up, make one's own decisions, is a characteristic of maturity. This implies a considerable amount of independence. A mature person is not dependent unless ill. Maturity includes a determination, a will to succeed and achieve, a will to live. Of course, maturity represents the capacity to cooperate; to work with others; to work in an organization and under authority. The mature person is flexible, can defer to time, persons, circumstances. He can show tolerance. He can be patient, and, above all, he has qualities of adaptability and compromise. Basically, maturity represents a wholesome amalgamation of two things: 1) Dissatisfaction with the status quo, which calls forth aggressive, constructive effort, and 2) Social concern and devotion. Emotional maturity is the morale of the individual.
Ability | Adaptability | Authority | Capacity | Character | Circumstances | Determination | Devotion | Effort | Endurance | Giving | Individual | Organization | Persistence | Personality | Qualities | Reliability | Size | Struggle | Time | Will | Work |
Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.
Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
Age | Enough | Family | Father | Isolation | Mother | Nature | People | Security | Wisdom | World |
The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed. Discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error - a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age.
Age | Better | Discussion | Error | Good | Passion | Personality | Truth | Wisdom |