This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We do not learn to know men through their coming to us. To find out what sort of persons they are, we must go to them.
David Grayson, pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker
All times are great exactly in proportion as men feel, profoundly, their indebtedness to something or other... A feeling of immeasurable obligation puts life into a man and fight into him, and joy into him.
Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax
If men would think more, they would act less.
No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.
W. T. Grant, fully William Thomas Grant
It must be obvious to those who take the time to look at human life that its greatest values lie not in getting things, but in doing them, in doing them together, in all working toward a common aim, in the experience of comradeship, of warmhearted 100% human life.
Character | Experience | Life | Life | Time |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Many men spend their lives gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.
We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies.
Ralph A. Habas, fully Ralph Alfred Habas
The world is what people make it.
In all our reasonings concerning men we must lay it down as a maxim that the greater part are moulded by circumstances.
Character | Circumstances | Men |
Wisdome teacheth men to forecast the worst, that they may be provided against the worst.
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 |
Corrupt as men are, they are yet so much the creatures of reflection, and so strongly addicted to sentiments of right and wrong, that their attachment to a public cause can rarely be secured, or their animosity be kept alive, unless their understandings are engaged by some appearance of truth and rectitude.
Appearance | Cause | Character | Men | Public | Reflection | Right | Truth | Wrong |