This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nature is sanitive, refining, elevating. How cunning she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew! Every inch; of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purpose with the bloom of youth and joy.
Antiquity | Cunning | Day | Joy | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Youth | Youth |
Our faith comes in moments, our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
You fear to quit the medleys of the world, where vanity reigns, where avarice tarnishes the most beautiful virtues, where infidelity holds dominion with the sway of a despot, where virtue is trampled under foot and vice carries off the prize of honor.
Avarice | Despot | Fear | Honor | Virtue | Virtue | World | Infidelity | Vice |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
It was asked of the sage, In what one virtue are all the rest comprised? Patience, was his answer. And in what single vice are all the others concentrated? Vindictiveness.
The vice of envy is… always a confession of inferiority.
Envy | Inferiority | Vice |
As virtue is its own reward, so vice is its own punishment.
Punishment | Reward | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Philosopher, lover of wisdom, that is to say, of truth. All philosophers have had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity who has not given mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral truths. They have all contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; but natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of life, that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken centuries to learn a part of nature’s laws. One day was sufficient for a wise man to learn the duties of man.
Antiquity | Character | Conduct | Day | Life | Life | Little | Man | Mankind | Nature | Need | Philosophy | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Wise | Learn |
There is no vice so simple, but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts.
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their favor, but is a proud compliment to man’s nature. Whatever he is or does, he cannot entirely efface the stamp of the divinity on him. Let him strive ever so, he cannot divest himself of his natural sublimity of thought and affection, however he may pervert or deprave it to ill.
Crime | Divinity | Infamy | Man | Nature | Nothing | Religion | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Thought | Vice |
People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but itself.
Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities owe possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.
Affectation | Appearance | Distinction | Envy | Folly | Infamy | Passion | Pride | Qualities | Superiority | Think | Vice |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Work banishes those three great evils: Boredom, vice and poverty.
The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy | Repentance | Vice |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with man heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything.
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.