This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.
Character | Dignity | Originality | Struggle | Work |
Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him, for you are not.
Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva
There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity.
Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.
Appearance | Character | Dignity | Intelligence | Perseverance | Silence | Wisdom |
There is nothing a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them.
Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Consciousness | Dignity | Discipline | Discovery | Force | Good | Habit | Influence | Man | Nothing | Occupation | Opinion | Power | Public | Regulation | Self | Thought | Yielding | Discovery |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
To attain excellence in society, an assemblage of qualification is requisite: disciplined intellect, to think clearly, and to clothe thought with propriety and elegance; knowledge of human nature, to suit subject to character; true politeness, to prevent giving pain; a deep sense of morality, to preserve the dignity of speech; and a spirit of benevolence, to neutralize its asperities, and sanctify its powers.
Benevolence | Character | Dignity | Elegance | Excellence | Giving | Human nature | Knowledge | Morality | Nature | Pain | Sense | Society | Speech | Spirit | Thought | Excellence | Think | Thought |
Robert C. Winthrop,fully Robert Charles Winthrop
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise, - all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
Character | Dignity | Education | Ignorance | Justice | Slavery | Wisdom |
Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe
This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.
Books | Character | Comfort | Destiny | Dignity | Ideas | Man | Mockery | Peace | Wisdom | Words | Work |
Freedom springs from within, whether in a man or in a people. To remove disabilities and confer the franchise is not enough. Men must be enabled to grow if they are to exercise their rights with dignity and effect. For this reason the widening of the franchise in democratic countries has always been accompanied or followed by the development of popular education.
Character | Dignity | Education | Enough | Freedom | Man | Men | People | Reason | Rights | Wisdom |