This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross
It would be a mistake to found a natural science on ‘what we really think’ ... opinions are interpretations, and often misinterpretations, of sense-experience; and the man of science must appeal from these to sense-experience itself, which furnishes his real data. In ethics no such appeal is possible... the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people are the data of ethics just as sense-perceptions are the data of a natural science.
Character | Convictions | Ethics | Experience | Man | Mistake | People | Science | Sense |
Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL
Many good people admire what is bad, but no one condemns what is good.
One cannot properly appreciate the human realities so long as one labors under the adolescent delusion that people get the fates they deserve.
It is no happiness to live long, nor unhappiness to die soon; happy is he that hath lived long enough to die well.
Character | Enough | Happy | Unhappiness | Happiness |
Nancy Reagan, born Anne Frances Robbins
Love means giving one’s self to another person fully, not just physically. When two people really love each other, this helps them to stay alive and grow. One must be loved to grow. Love’s such a precious and fragile thing that when it comes we have to hold on tightly. And when it comes, we’re very lucky because for some it never comes at all. If you have love, you’re wealthy in a way that can never be measured.
Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein
A person who makes his happiness dependent on material or physical pleasures will never be guaranteed happiness. There is always something that might happen to destroy his happiness and success. The only guarantee for happiness is to find happiness in spiritual growth.
Character | Destroy | Growth | Guarantee | Success | Will | Happiness |
Our principles are the springs of our actions; our actions, the springs of our happiness or misery. Too much care, therefore, cannot be taken in forming our principles.
Care | Character | Principles | Happiness |
Dark and distorting are the minds of people who dislike us; and when we meet them, we make dismal reflections.
We usually fall asleep in our relationships... not because we are tired of love but so we can dream of new relationships. Life, however, is a work in progress, and love's challenge is not to see people as they once were but as they might be. People who grow old can also grow love.
Challenge | Character | Life | Life | Love | People | Progress | Work | Old |
Even though we personally should do what we can to flee from honor, we still have an obligation to treat other people with honor and respect.
Character | Honor | Obligation | People | Respect |
What you owe the world is this: to move all goodwill to an enthusiastic, personal, and sensible commitment. Therein lies the great problem. Whatever you do toward this end will arouse people of goodwill throughout the world and encourage them to lend a hand in other countries.
Character | Commitment | People | Will | World |