This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The earnestness of life is the only passport to the satisfaction of life.
Earnestness | Life | Life | Wisdom |
Our material possessions, like our joys, are enhanced in value by being shared. Hoarded and unimproved property can only afford satisfaction to a miser.
Possessions | Property | Wisdom | Value |
The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use owe make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.
Eternal | Happy | Opportunity | Punishment | Repentance | Sentiment | Wisdom |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
“It is not safe to be alone,” nor can all which the cold-hearted, pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship. A good heart wants something to be kind to; and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits suffer most under the destitution.
Good | Heart | Mind | Nature | Philosophy | Safe | Society | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Yearnings | Society |
E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
Nothing comes harder than original thought. Even the most gifted scientist spends only a tiny fraction of his waking hours doing it, probably less than one tenth of one percent. the rest of the time his mind hugs the coast of the known, reworking old information, adding lesser data, giving reluctant attention to the ideas of others (what use can I make of them?), warming lazily to the memory of successful experiments, and looking for a problem - always looking for a problem, something that can be accomplished, that will lead somewhere, anywhere.
Attention | Giving | Ideas | Memory | Mind | Nothing | Rest | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom | Old |
Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
There is probably no direct way to get in touch with our inner selves or to seek out satisfaction and happiness. It’s best to live by sound principles – honesty, courage, liberty, and love – and then to await what unfolds. When, inevitably, we go astray for a time, we must return, once again, to living by the principles we cherish. The formula isn’t all that difficult to understand; applying it is the work of a lifetime.
Courage | Honesty | Liberty | Love | Principles | Sound | Time | Work |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal and catastrophic lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten that they are living on a star.
By happiness we are to understand the internal satisfaction of the soul, arising from the possession of good; and by good, whatever is suitable or agreeable to man for his preservation, perfection, convenience, or pleasure.
Good | Man | Perfection | Pleasure | Soul | Happiness | Understand |
There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
Memory | Temptation | Temptation |
In the end the quest in all religions seems to be for supremely enduring satisfaction either in this life or beyond.