This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There be four good mothers who have four bad daughters: Truth hath Hatred, Prosperity hath Pride, Security hath Peril, and Familiarity hath Contempt.
Character | Contempt | Familiarity | Good | Peril | Pride | Prosperity | Security | Truth |
The desire to serve others is the highest impulse of the human heart and the rewards of such service are beyond measure. If you wish to taste this, then just do it. Just take one step... You will see that the tyranny of self-concern, worry, and trivial pursuits can be released from your life with that single step. It doesn't really matter what you do, it only matters that you do it.
Character | Desire | Heart | Impulse | Life | Life | Self | Service | Taste | Tyranny | Will | Worry |
There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man's desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
This is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice.
Justice | Law | Love | Modesty | Nothing | Property | Reason | Right | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | Value |
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
For this cause he came into the world; that he might be a witness to the truth; a living, unimpeachable witness of the truth that shall make us free - the truth of man’s religion (reunion) with God, through absolute spiritual self consciousness - with God - with the Eternal, Omnipotent and Omniscient Source and Fountain of Life, “in whom we live and move and have our being,” without whom we are not!
Absolute | Cause | Character | Consciousness | Eternal | God | Life | Life | Man | Religion | Self | Truth | Witness | World | God |
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
The truth is always respectable.
To say that people have a moral sense is not the same thing as saying that they are innately good. A moral sense must compete with other senses that are natural to humans - the desire to survive, acquire possessions, indulge in sex, or accumulate power - in short, with self-interest narrowly defined. How that struggle is resolved will differ depending on our character, our circumstances, and the cultural and political tendencies of the day. But saying that a moral sense exists is the same thing as saying that humans, by their nature, are potentially good.
Character | Circumstances | Day | Desire | Good | Nature | People | Possessions | Power | Self | Self-interest | Sense | Struggle | Will |
Rabbi Akiva, fully Rebbe Akiva ben Yosef NULL
Whatsoever is hateful unto thee, do it not unto thy neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah, the rest is but commentary.