This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning obscures the luster of every accomplishment and sinks us into contempt. The path of falsehood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from sincerity, it is not in our power to stop; one artifice unavoidably leads on to another, till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our snare." - Hugh Blair
"How often do we sigh for opportunities of doing good, whist we neglect the openings of Providence in little things, which would frequently lead to the accomplishment of most important usefulness!... Good is done by degrees. However small in proportion the benefits which follow individual attempts to do good, a great deal may thus be accomplished by perseverance, even in the midst of discouragements and disappointments." - George Crabbe
"In reality a major part of pleasure in obtaining things is overcoming the obstructions that stood in our way. Once we realize this, we will be able to decrease our desire for those things that are spiritually or physically harmful just by examining them objectively and seeing that we are not missing so much. At the same time, we can gain more pleasure from spiritual accomplishments by focusing on how much we are missing in this area and can feel the sense of accomplishment in overcoming the necessary difficulties." - Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler
"Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress. With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only habits." - Henry Ford
"Brotherhood doesn't come in a package. It is not a commodity to be taken down from the shelf with one hand - it is an accomplishment of soul-searching prayer, and perseverance... The spontaneous feeling of brotherhood is a mark of human maturity." - Oveta Culp Hobby
"The work we are doing is more or less the work we meant to do in life [but] it does not yield us the feeling of accomplishment we had expected... If I were required to put into a single sentence my own explanation of the state of our hearts, heads, and nerves, I would do it this way: we are vaguely wretched because we are leading half-lives, half-heartedly, and with only one-half of our minds actively, engaged in making contact with the universe about us." - Walter Kerr, fully Walter Francis Kerr
"At first glance, life appears meaningless, futile, full of contradictions and absurdities. But a deeper, meditating look uncovers beauty, order and harmony, revealing life as a supreme accomplishment of eternal wisdom... All of creation is an act of love and providence, a drama imbued with meaning... In simple words: Life is a mission of awareness and awakening and deep enlightenment. We are here to sense this divine presence beyond all phenomena. We are here to recognize a deep urge in our hearts to act in harmony, in conformity and in love with these divinities." - Mustapha Mahmoud
"Five minutes, just before going to sleep, given to a bit of directed imagination regarding achievement possibilities of the morrow, will steadily and increasingly bear fruit, particularly if all ideas of difficulty, worry or fear are resolutely ruled out and replace by those of accomplishment and smiling courage." -
"Success is the reward for accomplishment." - Harry F. Banks, real name possibly Harry Band
"Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It is a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment." - Eric Butterworth
"Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to a formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of accomplishment in living, and the depth of insight into beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature." - Louis Orr
"Holy, humble, penitent, believing, earnest, persevering prayer is never lost; it always prevails to the accomplishment of the thing sought, or that with which the suppliant will be better satisfied in the end, according to the superior wisdom of his heavenly father, in which he trusts." - Edward Weeks
"Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult; make something big by starting with it when small." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Values are goals which behavior strives to realize. Any activity which is oriented toward the accomplishment of some end is a value-oriented activity." - Ervin László
"To learn the whole Talmud is a great accomplishment; to learn one good virtue is even greater." - Yiddish Proverbs
"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
"Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress. With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis." - Henry Ford
"Whatever accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you." - African Proverbs
"Happiness is not external; it is not a function of what one does or does not. Happiness is in the attitude that one brings to everything one does... So if we create our own happiness, what should we be aiming toward? The answer: happiness is the fulfillment of our dreams, the accomplishment of what we set out to do, living our lives as we want to live them... Happiness, then, can reside in the carrying out of the myriad everyday tasks that we all take for granted, with one very small, but significant difference. Outwardly, we may be doing what we always do, but inwardly, our entire being is immersed and engaged more fully n each and every action, a condition known as mindfulness." -
"Happiness is not external; it is not a function of what one does or does not. Happiness is in the attitude that one brings to everything one does... So if we create our own happiness, what should we be aiming toward? The answer: happiness is the fulfillment of our dreams, the accomplishment of what we set out to do, living our lives as we want to live them... Happiness, then, can reside in the carrying out of the myriad everyday tasks that we all take for granted, with one very small, but significant difference. Outwardly, we may be doing what we always do, but inwardly, our entire being is immersed and engaged more fully n each and every action, a condition known as mindfulness." - Alan Epstein
"The task of theology is to show how the world is founded on something beyond transient fact, and how it issues in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal world is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of theology to express that element in perishing lives which is undying by reason of its expression of perfection proper to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle, and a victory." - Author Unknown NULL
"This is the day of instant genius. Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline." - Helen Hayes
"Basically, human beings want satisfaction and fulfillment, and we especially want to feel a sense of accomplishment in what we are doing. Being of service and achieving something of value to others while feeling balanced and healthy are the essential reasons for working." - Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms
"Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom. " - Erik Erickson
"Death - the ultimate deadline. The first step in seeing death as an ally of accomplishment is to remove the childhood fears we have concerning death... Death encourages action... Death encourages risk." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth." - Napoleon Hill
"There can be no great accomplishment without risk." - Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong
"It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgment — all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual... The greatest scientific deed of her life — proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them — owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed." - Albert Einstein
"I Still Trust in The People. [engraved on his tombstone]" - Samuel Tilden, fully Samuel Jones Tilden
"The long ages of infancy and childhood, through which the human race has to pass, have receded into the background. Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of adulthood. Mankind, in these fateful years... is... being simultaneously called upon to give account of its past actions, and is being purged and prepared for its future mission. It can neither escape the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the future. Then will a world civilization be born, flourish, and perpetuate itself, a civilization with a fullness of life such as the world has never seen nor can as yet conceive... Then will the promise enshrined in all the books of God be redeemed, and all the prophecies uttered by the prophets of old come to pass, and the vision of seers and poets be realized. Then will the planet, galvanized through the universal belief of its dwellers in one God, and their allegiance to one common revelation... be acclaimed as the earthly heaven, capable of fulfilling that ineffable destiny fixed for it from time immemorial by the love and wisdom of its Creator." - Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání
"The chief excitement in a woman's life is spotting women who are fatter than she is" - Helen Rowland
"But it isn’t just a matter of faith, but of faith and works. Each is necessary. For the demons also believe –you heard the apostle- and tremble (Jas 2:19); but their believing doesn’t do them any good. Faith alone is not enough, unless works too are joined to it: Faith working through love(Gal 5:6), says the apostle." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"It is not the organizations of labor which take away from the workers their individual rights or their sovereignty. It is modern industry, modern capitalism, modern corporations, and modern trusts. . . . The workingmen in modern industries lose their individuality as soon as they step into a modern industrial plant, and that individuality which they lose is regained to them by organization--they gain in social and industrial importance by their association with their fellow workmen." - Samuel Gompers
"Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning." - Thomas Merton
"Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us." - Wayne Muller
"I believe in pride of race and lineage and self - in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
"Her mind was like a spring-tide in full flood; rich, shining, vigorous, and capable of infinite variety." - Vera Mary Brittain