This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In all our reasonings concerning men we must lay it down as a maxim that the greater part are moulded by circumstances.
Character | Circumstances | Men |
War some day will be abolished by the will of man. This assertion does not in any way invalidate the truth that war is fundamentally caused by impersonal, political, economic and social forces. But it is the destiny of man to master and control such force, even as it is his destiny to harness rivers, chain the lightning and ride the storm. It is human will, operating under social forces, that has abolished slavery, infanticide, dueling, and a score of other social enormities. Why should it not do the same for war?
Assertion | Character | Control | Day | Destiny | Force | Man | Slavery | Truth | War | Will | Wisdom |
Wisdome teacheth men to forecast the worst, that they may be provided against the worst.
Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself. As to the pure all things are pure, even so to the impure all things are impure.
Character | Confidence | Evil | Man |
God gave every man individuality of constitution, and a chance for achieving individuality of character. He puts special instruments into every man’s hands by which to make himself and achieve his mission.
Corrupt as men are, they are yet so much the creatures of reflection, and so strongly addicted to sentiments of right and wrong, that their attachment to a public cause can rarely be secured, or their animosity be kept alive, unless their understandings are engaged by some appearance of truth and rectitude.
Appearance | Cause | Character | Men | Public | Reflection | Right | Truth | Wrong |
It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men |
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame, or blame; which verbal discourse cannot do, farther than the judgment shall approve of the time, place and persons.
Blame | Character | Grave | Judgment | Light | Man | Shame | Time |
A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man, and men are the particles of which it is composed.
It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he makes of what he knows; not a question of what he has acquired, but how he has been trained, but of what he is, and what he can do.
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
The proud man hath no God; the envious man hath no neighbor; the angry man hath not himself.
Be charitable in your thoughts, in your speech and in your actions. Be charitable in your judgments, in your attitudes and in your prayers. Think charitably of your friends, your neighbors, your relatives and even your enemies. And if there be those whom you can help in a material way, do so in a quiet, friendly, neighborly way, as if it were the most command and everyday experience for you. Tongues of men and angels, gifts of prophecy and all mysteries and all knowledge are as nothing without charity.
Angels | Character | Charity | Experience | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Prophecy | Quiet | Speech | Think |
When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in others respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.
Avarice | Character | Evil | Giving | Good | Hate | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Nothing | Society | Guilty |