This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take way with us.
(D. H. Lawrence) was the first modern novelist to realize that men and women cannot solve one another's loneliness.
Loneliness | Men |
If thinking is perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.
Character | Mind | Object | Sense | Soul | Thinking | Thought |
Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is our actions - what we do - that we are happy or the reverse.
Action | Character | Happy | Imitation | Life | Life | Qualities | Tragedy | Happiness |
Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy... In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a prosperous fool.
Character | Good | Men | Nothing | Understanding | Wealth | Value |
Anne Frank, fully Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank
How true Daddy’s words were when he said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.
Advice | Character | Children | Good | Parents | Right | Words |
Women complain about sex more often than men. Their gripes fall into two major categories: (1) Not enough, (2) Too much.
Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.
Character | Good | Man | Merit | Mind | Praise | Respect | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise | Respect |
Anne Frank, fully Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank
The final forming of a person's character lies in his own hands.
Since things that are found in the soul are of three kinds - passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, for example, of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, for example, with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions. Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed.
Anger | Appetite | Character | Confidence | Envy | Example | Fear | Feelings | Good | Joy | Longing | Man | Pain | Pity | Pleasure | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face.
Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on guard. It is in insignificant matters, and in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others, and denies nothing to itself.
There is no more important element in the formation of a virtuous character than a rightly directed sense of pleasure and dislike; for pleasure and pain are coextensive with life, and they exercise a powerful influence in promoting virtue and happiness in life.
Character | Important | Influence | Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Sense | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
Success in administration obviously stands or falls on skill in execution. Execution means, above, all, the right people – it means having men and women capable of providing the information and carrying out the decision.
Administration | Decision | Means | Men | People | Right | Skill | Success |
Personality has the power to open many doors, but character must keep them open.
Character | Personality | Power |