This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Strength of character is not measured by who we support but by knowing we all lean on one another.
Trifles discover a character more than actions of importance.
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Every individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.
Character | Contradiction | Individual | Right | Self | Wrong |
Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world.
Character | Conscience | Good | Human nature | Individual | Men | Nature | Order | Power | Qualities | Rule | Society | World |
Learning is the raising of character by the broadening of vision and the deepening of feeling.
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
Trifles discover character more than actions of seeming importance; what one is in little things he is also in great.
Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation - above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself - here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.
There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry which nourishes only weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and groveling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart.
Ancestry | Avarice | Care | Character | Heart | Posterity | Pride | Regard | Respect | Respect |
Be not content with the commonplace in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart.
Ambition | Attainment | Character | Conscience | Heart | Impression | Power | Will | World | Ambition |