This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We can flow along with the mainstream of a culture that does not serve us well – does not really make us comfortable, does not really make us safe; but only offers illusions of happiness, comfort, safety – or we can begin the oftentimes prickly work of searching our own hearts, of asking who and what we love, who and what we feel strongly enough about to change our lives for, to fight for, to live for.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Toleration… is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
Balance | Effort | Mind | Toleration |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Forgiveness is not explanation… Explanations have to do with exploring causes, with digging down into the past in an effort to exert whatever control is still possible over the past. Forgiveness, on the other hand, has to do with letting go of the past – giving up the claim to control the past and refusing to be controlled by it. But forgiving is not the same thing as forgetting. “Letting go” of the past is not some kind of erasure; forgiveness is not an attempt to obliterate the past or wipe the slate clean… because the past is important, there can be no “unconditional forgiveness.”
Control | Effort | Forgiveness | Giving | Important | Past | Forgiveness |
Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona
Virtues transcend time and culture (although their cultural expression may vary); justice and kindness, for example, will always and everywhere be virtues, regardless of how many people exhibit them.
Culture | Example | Justice | Kindness | People | Time | Will |
In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide; and I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on an endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations.
Effort | Method | Nations | Problems | Society | Suicide | War | Will | Society |
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.
Culture |
Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it.
Asceticism | Effort | Human nature | Nature | Sacrifice | Asceticism |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free.
Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape.
Anger | Appetite | Avarice | Effort | Envy | Fear | Gluttony | Lust | Power | Pride | Self | Sloth |
Telling someone something that you like, admire, or appreciate about them is a "random act of kindness." It takes almost no effort (once you get used to it), yet it pays enormous dividends.