This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
Circumstances | Earnestness | Generosity | Kindness | Practice | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.
Circumstances | Earnestness | Generosity | Kindness | Practice | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.
Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Society |
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned into it), are the natural securities for this transmission.
Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Distinction | Family | Possessions | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Wealth | Society |
Are we only able to see who we actually are at life’s beginnings and endings? Do only extreme circumstances reveal ordinary truths? Are we otherwise blind to our genuine selves? This is the key lesson of life: to find our authentic selves, and to see the authenticity in others.
Authenticity | Circumstances | Extreme | Lesson | Life | Life |
The mind wants to believe that changing our circumstances will bring us peace. The mind thinks we’ve got to do something. But the reality is that we can relax in the circumstances as they are now, knowing that deep patience will bring deep peace and healing.
Circumstances | Knowing | Mind | Patience | Peace | Reality | Wants | Will |
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
Circumstances | People | World |
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
Circumstances | People | World |
A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit; they lapse only when the corporeal frame that sustains them yields to circumstances and changes its habit.
Even under the most favourable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its centre.
Circumstances | Mortal | Truth | Wholeness |
It is not what a man gets, but what a man is that he should think of. He should first think of his character and then of his condition. He that has character need have no fears about his condition. Character will draw after it condition. Circumstances obey principles.
Character | Circumstances | Man | Need | Principles | Will | Think |
Change a virtue in its circumstances and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.
Change | Circumstances | Fault | Man | Merit | Regard | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be our own producing.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects... The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society... The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that the relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
Circumstances | Man | Means | Nature | Society |
Prudence is that virtue by which we discern what is proper to be done under the various circumstances of time and place.
Circumstances | Prudence | Prudence | Time | Virtue | Virtue |
Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstances with which they cannot contend.
Circumstances | Ideas |
When circumstances change, I change my view; what do you do?
Change | Circumstances |