This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nobility of soul is more honorable than nobility of birth.
Never expect to find perfection in men, in my commerce with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They who raise suspicions on the good, on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter.
Age | Behavior | Commerce | Daring | Duty | Evil | Fame | Good | Little | Men | Perfection | Public | Reputation | Sensibility | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Commerce |
Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of what may happen to us because of it.
Evil | Fear | Regret | Repentance |
One ship drives east, and another west with the self-same winds that blow: `tis the set of the sails and not the gales, which decides the way we go. Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate, as they voyage along through life; “tis the will of the soul that decides the goal, and not the calm or the strife.
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an evil government.
Evil | Government | Kindness | Life | Life | Objectives | Suspicion | Will |
With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun. The past has shrived and buried deep all yesterdays; there let them sleep. Concern yourself with but today, woo it, and teach it to obey your will and wish. Since time began today has been the friend of man; but in his blindness and his sorrow, he looks to yesterday and tomorrow. You, and today! a soul sublime, and the great pregnant hour of time, with God himself to bind the twain! Go forth, I say - attain, attain! With God himself to bind the twain.
Friend | God | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Past | Sorrow | Soul | Teach | Time | Tomorrow | Will | God | Think |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
Experience | Soul |
His momentous achievements are rarely the result of a clean forward thrust but rather of a soul intensity generated in front of an apparently insurmountable obstacle which bars his way to a cherished goal.
In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes - courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Alchemy | Compassion | Courage | Duty | Evil | Faith | Good | Honor | Hope | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Man | Ruthlessness | Soul |
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hard thing to hide is something that is not there.
Good judgment in our dealings with others consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions but in being able to waken the decency dormant in every person.