This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's-land between honesty and dishonesty.
Character | Dishonesty | Honesty | Land | Little | Man | Public |
Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It's just letting the whole thing go. 'I forgive you for not being the way I want you to be. I forgive you and set you free.' (Affirmation sets you free.)
Behavior | Character | Forgiveness | Giving | Means | Nothing | Forgive |
Ralph A. Habas, fully Ralph Alfred Habas
The world is what people make it.
A person who does not mix with other people will not know how to help others. Such a person lacks knowledge about the way people think, their wants and their desires. Even if he wants to help others, he will not know what is good for them. When he wants to comply with the wishes of others, he will confuse them with his own wishes. Because he lacks knowledge about other people, he will not be able to say what is appropriate and acceptable even if he tries. His obstacle is not a lack of love for his fellow man, but a lack of understanding of others.
Character | Good | Knowledge | Love | Man | People | Understanding | Wants | Will | Wishes | Obstacle |
Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind.
Character | Opposition | People |
There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses; all knowledge, at all events, is examined by these, approved by them, and finally presents itself to us firmly grounded upon some preexisting knowledge which we possessed: because without memory there is no experience, which is nothing else than reiterated memory; in like manner memory cannot exist without endurance of the things perceived, and the thing perceived cannot remain where it has never been.
Character | Endurance | Events | Experience | Knowledge | Memory | Nothing |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
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.
Conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minute’s’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not differ sensibly from a straight line.
Character | Conversation | Enough | Little | People | Intellect |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man, and men are the particles of which it is composed.
What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
Character | Impatience | Men | People | Time | Unhappiness |
Stephen Grellet, born Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier
I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.
Character | Government | Honor | People |
Sarah Grand, pseudonymn of Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke McFall
Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than in what they make us see in ourselves.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.
Character | Difficulty | People |
Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa
The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.
Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |
To this war of every man, against every man, this is also consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice, are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his sense, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thing distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it.
Body | Character | Force | Fraud | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Law | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Power | Qualities | Right | Sense | Society | Solitude | War | World | Wrong |
Most people think dramatically, not quantitatively.