This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The light of the understanding, humility kindleth and pride covereth.
Character | Humility | Light | Pride | Understanding |
The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or immortal hope except the principles of the Christian faith...
Character | Faith | Freedom | History | Hope | Knowledge | Light | Principles | Religion | Security | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |
Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein
What is the difference between mourning and sadness? Mourning takes hold of one’s heart, but not one’s mind, while sadness takes hold of the mind. Mourning leads to thinking, while sadness stops one’s thoughts. Mourning stems from the light in one’s soul, while sadness comes from the darkness of the soul. Mourning arouses one to life, while sadness brings to the opposite. The Torah obligates mourning when it is appropriate, while it forbids sadness and commands we serve the Almighty with joy.
Character | Darkness | Heart | Joy | Life | Life | Light | Mind | Mourning | Sadness | Soul | Thinking | Torah |
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red light... The truly wise person is colorblind.
He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain a very poor creature, for riches are no proof of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glowworm's light reveals the grub.
Attention | Character | Light | Logic | Man | Riches | Worth | Riches |
We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.
Character | Common Sense | Light | Men | Morality | Nations | Proverbs | Sense | Time | Wise | Wit | Old |
In our thinking we must preserve an open and enquiring mind, an ability to see things through the eyes of our opponents, a skill for understanding the motives and thoughts of those whom we oppose. Yet we must act in the light of the best knowledge and reason available to us at the moment.
Ability | Character | Knowledge | Light | Mind | Motives | Reason | Skill | Thinking | Understanding | Wisdom |
I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thought; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean of the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man - a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.
Character | Joy | Light | Man | Mind | Sense | Spirit | Thinking | Thought |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.
Roger Bacon, scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis meaning "Wonderful Teacher"
For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience; since many have the arguments relating to what can be known, but because they lack experience they neglect the arguments, and neither avoid what is harmful nor follow what is good. For if a man who has never seen fire should prove by adequate reasoning that fire burns and injures things and destroys them, his mind would not be satisfied thereby, nor would he avoid fire, until he placed his hand or some combustible substance in the fire, so that he might prove by experience that which reasoning taught. But when he has had actual experience of combustion his mind is made certain and rests in the full light of truth. Therefore reasoning does not suffice, but experience does.
Doubt | Experience | Intuition | Knowledge | Light | Man | Mind | Neglect | Rest | Wisdom |