This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whatever may be his [man's] true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution (change and extinction). This is the character of all life and being - each is at once the centre and the circumference; the point to which all things are contained.
God is a model through which the excellence of man is to be estimated, whilst the abstract perfection of the human character is the type of the actual perfection of the divine.
Abstract | Character | Excellence | Man | Model | Perfection | Excellence |
Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
Such was law; and it has maintained its two-fold character to this day. Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skillful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.
I assume that each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from everything else, however near or like. I assume that such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species now, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now and are as distinct now as they were then. If any choose to maintain... that species were gradually bought to their present maturity from humbler forms... he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do with it.
Character | Distinguish | Nothing | Present |
Philippine Proverbs, aka Philipino, Filipino, Ilocano and Tagalog Proverbs, Salawikain or Sawikain
A good character is more valuable than gold.
Someday, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now... Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.
When in our days Religion is made a political engine, she exposes herself to having her sacred character forgotten. The most tolerant become intolerant towards her. Believers, who believe something else besides what she teaches, retaliate by attacking her in the very sanctuary itself.
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
A person however learned and qualified in his life's work in whom gratitude is absent, is devoid of that beauty of character which makes personality fragrant.
Beauty | Character | Gratitude | Personality | Work | Beauty |
Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti NULL
It violates right order whenever capital so employees the working or wage-earning classes as to divert business and economic activity entirely to its own arbitrary will and advantage without, the social character of economic life, social justice, and the common good.
It is not only to the poets therefore that we must issue orders requiring them to represent good character in their poems or not to write at all; we must issue similar orders to all artists and prevent them from portraying bad character, ill-discipline, meanness, or ugliness in painting, sculpture, architecture, or any work of art, and if they are unable to comply they must be forbidden to practice their art. We shall thus prevent our guardians being brought up among representations of what is evil, and so day by day and little by little, by feeding as it were in an unhealthy pasture, insensibly doing themselves grave psychological damage. Our artists and craftsmen must be capable of perceiving the real nature of what is beautiful, and then our young men, living as it were in a good climate, will benefit because all the works of art they see and hear influence them for good, like the breezes from some healthy country with what is rational and right.
Art | Character | Day | Good | Grave | Influence | Little | Nature | Practice | Will | Work | Art |
One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on.
Ambition | Change | Character | Eternal | Knowledge | Love | Men | Will | Ambition |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?" What more valuable for the elevation of our own character?
Character | Important | Man | Means | Opinion | Pleasure | Receive | Study | Understand |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered: but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battle.
Action | Character | Distinguish | Important |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration. Action too implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless or whether it be driven by the impulse comported by the term Action to find its goal in an external object. There is Motion in both Action and Passion, but the differentia distinguishing Action from Passion keeps Action impassive, while Passion is recognized by the fact that a new state replaces the old, though nothing is added to the essential character of the patient; whenever Being [essential Being] is produced, the patient remains distinct.
Action | Character | Existence | Impulse | Nothing | Passion |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken... Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
Beginning | Character | Children | Ideas | Important | Impression | Receive | Time |