This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.
Character | Individual | Instinct | Little | Love | Men | Object | People | Loss | Vicissitudes | Happiness | Value |
Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.
The best arguments in favor of marriage and family life are not that they promote happiness and reduce loneliness, though at their best they do these things, but that they create a situation in which facing the truth about ourselves - our self-deceiving, touchy, vain, inflated selves - becomes more difficult to avoid than it is anywhere else.
Character | Family | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Self | Truth | Happiness |
Friedrich Gentz, aka Friedrich von Gentz
Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social life would be the sport of winds and waves. If the alter had exclusive sway, or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which these two principles are the most equally balanced. In such ages every enlightened man ought to adopt both principles, and with one hand develop what he can, with the other restrain and uphold what he ought.
Character | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Principles | Progress | World | Govern |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Simplicity is the straightforwardness of a soul which refuses itself any reaction with regard to itself or its deeds. This virtue differs from and surpasses sincerity. We see many people who are sincere without being simple. They do not wish to be taken for other than what they are; but they are always fearing lest they should be taken for what they are not.
Character | Deeds | People | Regard | Simplicity | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
The dream, which fulfills its wishes by following the short regressive path, has thereby simply preserved for us a specimen of the primary method of operation of the psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned as inappropriate. What once prevailed in the waking state, when our psychic life was still young and inefficient, seems to have been banished into our nocturnal life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive weapons of adult humanity, the bow and arrow.
Character | Humanity | Life | Life | Method | Weapons | Wishes | Following |
The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These for the most part be summed in these two - common sense and perseverance.
Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Means | Perseverance | Qualities | Sense |
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
He is well along the road to perfect manhood who does not allow the thousand little worries of life to embitter his temper, or disturb his equanimity. An undivided heart which worships God alone, and trust him as it should, is raised above anxiety for earthly wants.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Character | Equanimity | God | Heart | Life | Life | Little | Temper | Trust | Wants | God |
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a.k.a. Charlotte Anna (nee Perkins), Charlotte Perkins Stetson
[Suicide note] - Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.
Character | Death | Grief | Heart | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pain | Power | Rights | Service | Suicide | Usefulness |