This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
Character | Dignity | Originality | Struggle | Work |
Some people gauge their value by what they own. But in reality the entire concept of ownership of possessions is based on an illusion. When you obtain a material object, it does not become part of you. Ownership is merely your right to use specific objects whenever you wish and that no one has a right to take them away from you. How unfortunate is the person who has an ambition to cleave to something impossible to cleave to. Such a person will not obtain what he desires and will experience suffering.
Ambition | Character | Experience | Illusion | Object | People | Possessions | Reality | Right | Suffering | Will | Ambition | Value |
Mike Gass, fully Michael A. Gass
What are the qualities of Life? It can be shared forever, but cannot be kept forever. When given to another, it brings great joy to all; when taken, the anguish for many is great. It is sometimes maintained by less than the thread of a string and sometimes lost despite the hopes of millions. Its frailty and end are obvious, but its strength and limits endless. So share your life with me while we are together so we can create that which will bring joy to others. When this life is over, let the meaning of our lives be found not on a list of accomplishments, but in the hearts and souls of the people with whom we shared our fragile existence. Let our lives not be measured by what we did for others, but by what we helped people do for themselves.
Character | Existence | Joy | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Qualities | Strength | Will |
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 |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
It seems not to be true that there is a power in the universe, which watches over the well-being of every individual with parental care and brings all his concerns to a happy ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man are incompatible with a universal principle of benevolence or with - what is to some degree contradictory - a universal principle of justice... Dark, unfeeling, and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of rewards and punishments, which according to religion, governs the world, seems to have no existence.
Benevolence | Care | Character | Destiny | Existence | Happy | Individual | Justice | Man | Power | Religion | System | Universe | World |
To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does, but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.
Body | Character | Energy | Life | Life | Man | Wise | Work |
J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Our task is to discover the primordial, absolutely unconditioned first principle of all human knowledge... It is intended to express that Act which does not and cannot appear among the empirical states of our consciousness, but rather is at the basis of all consciousness and alone makes it possible.
Character | Consciousness | Knowledge | Wisdom |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.
Character | Individual | Instinct | Little | Love | Men | Object | People | Loss | Vicissitudes | Happiness | Value |
The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes and change the order of nations.
Action | Books | Change | Character | Desire | Enthusiasm | Influence | Joy | Nations | Order | Power | Reading | Wisdom | World |
Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.
What a man accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he approaches his tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic conquering spirit we get things done.
Ability | Challenge | Character | Day | Dynamic | Enthusiasm | Joy | Man | Miracles | Spirit | Work |
If principle is good for anything, it is worth living up to.