This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
The real success of our personal lives and businesses can best be measured by the relationships we have with the people most dear to us - our family and friends. If we fail in this aspect of our lives, no matter how vast our worldly possessions or how high we climb, we will have achieved very little.
Family | People | Possessions | Success | Will |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies.
Creed | Death | Fear | God | Greed | Harm | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Possessions | Reality | Will | God |
We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes… We always have the necessary resources to face the storms that life throws at us, but most of the time, those resources are locked up in the depths of our heart and we waste an enormous amount of time trying to find them. By the time we've found them, we already been defeated by adversity… We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand… We are all pilgrims in search of the unknown.
Fear | Heart | History | Life | Life | Possessions | Right | Search | Time | Waste | World | Afraid | Understand |
The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders… The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.
Possessions | Privilege |
Peace Pilgrim, born Mildred Lisette Norman Ryder
Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.
Care | Enough | Freedom | Possessions | Simplicity |
Both wealth and concord decline as possessions become pursued and honored. And virtue perishes with them as well.
Possessions | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth |
Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonorable and evil.
Attainment | Possessions | Virtue | Virtue |
O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
Harmony | Man | Possessions | Wise |
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Hillel used to say: “A brutish man cannot fear sin; an ignorant man cannot be pious, nor can the shy man learn, or the impatient man teach. He who engages excessively in business cannot become wise. In a place where there are no men strive to be a man. Moreover he saw a skull floating on the surface of the water and he said unto it: Because you drowned others they drowned you; and those that drowned you will eventually be drowned… The more flesh the more worms; the more possessions the more anxiety; the more women the more witchcraft; the more maidservants the more lewdness, the more manservants the more theft. But the more Torah the more life, the more schooling the more wisdom; the more counsel the more understanding; the more righteousness the more peace. If a man has acquired a good name he has gained something which enriches himself; but if he has acquired words of the Torah he has attained afterlife.”
Business | Counsel | Fear | Good | Man | Men | Possessions | Righteousness | Will | Words | Business | Counsel | Torah |
We have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes," he said. "But these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
One must pray earnestly. It is said that one can realize God by directing to Him the combined intensity of three attractions, namely, the child's attraction for the mother, the husband's attraction for the chaste wife, and the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man.
God | Possessions | God |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
God reveals Himself to a devotee who feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the child's attraction for its mother, and the husband's attraction for the chaste wife. If one feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions, then through it one can attain Him.
Force | Possessions |
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
You should strive in your prayer for a pure conscience, a will that is wholly with God, and a mind truly set upon Him.
Attention | Awareness | Desire | Experience | Faith | Father | God | Love | Order | Possessions | Reflection | Regard | Soul | Understanding | Wants | Will | God | Awareness | Understand |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
The conceptions I have summarized here I first put forward only tentatively, but in the course of time they have won such a hold over me that I can no longer think in any other way.
Attention | Better | Cause | Change | Civilization | Ethics | Example | Love | Nothing | Possessions | Precept | Religion | Unhappiness | Virtue | Virtue | Obstacle | Think |
A man who takes pride in natural abilities — I mean cleverness, the ability to learn, skill in reading, good diction, quick grasp, and all such skills as we possess without having to work for them — this man, I say, will never receive the blessings of heaven, since the man who is unfaithful in little is unfaithful and vainglorious in much. And there are men who wear their bodies to no purpose in the pursuit of total dispassion, heavenly treasures, miracle working, and prophetic ability, and the poor fools do not realize that humility, not hard work, is the mother of such things. The man who seeks a quid pro quo from God builds on uncertainty, whereas the man who considers himself a debtor will receive sudden and unexpected riches.
Man | Possessions | Poverty | Prayer |
Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
Freedom | Possessions |
Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and... he [can] be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will.
Ambition | Avarice | Duty | Existence | Faith | Genius | God | Mankind | Men | Misfortune | Opinion | People | Possessions | Rights | Teach | Toleration | Will | Misfortune | Ambition | Following | God |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean not the creative vitality of nature but a supreme being intelligent and benevolent, the answer must be a reluctant negative
Inequality | Men | Possessions | Power |