This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Angela Merkel, fully Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner
I see nothing that points to a recession in Germany. But I see considerable long-term tasks ahead of us that have to do with markets regaining confidence in Europe and that have a lot to do with reducing debt.
Confidence | Nothing |
There is probably no more important task parents--and the rest of the village--face than raising children not only to tolerate but to respect the differences among people and to recognize the rewards that come from serving others. I call this affirmative living--the positive energy we derive from taking pride in who we are and from having the confidence and moral grounding to reach out to those who are different.
Children | Confidence | Energy | Important | People | Pride | Respect | Rest | Respect |
It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.
Confidence | Danger | Effort | Important | Knowledge | Simplicity | Theories | Time | Danger |
How it happens that the pure and holy have such firm confidence in the immortality of the soul? Do they not by a deeper instinct or intuition, recognize their spirituality, and feel that they belong more to spirit than to flesh—more to eternity than to time?
Confidence | Eternity | Immortality | Instinct | Spirit |
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
There can never be a complete confidence in a power which is excessive.
Confidence | Power |
Ralph A. Habas, fully Ralph Alfred Habas
The confidence essential to effective habit-making comes as a rule from knowledge of previous and related successes.
Confidence | Knowledge | Rule |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
May you gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people.
Confidence | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Confidence | Doubt | Enough | Harmony | Life | Life | Patience | Simplicity | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others.
Confidence | Enough | Patience | Simplicity | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
Confidence | Feelings | Knowledge | Little |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.
Confidence | Love | Mind | Trust | Will |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.
Confidence | Enough | Life | Life | Patience | Simplicity | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Books | Confidence | Feelings | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Patience | People | Search | Trust | Will | Words | Think |
It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.
Calmness is the rarest quality in human life. It is the moral atmosphere of a life self-reliant and self-controlled. Calmness is absolute confidence and conscious power, ready to be focused in an instant to meet any crisis.
Absolute | Calmness | Confidence | Life | Life |
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!
Confidence | Courage | Evidence | Faith | Kill | People | Religion |
Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?
Abuse | Children | Confidence | Eternal | Will |
Confidence arises from faith when troubles make it the stronger. Therefore it is a true evidence of grace, when confidence increase with opposition, great troubles breeding great confidence.
Confidence | Evidence | Faith | Troubles |