This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey
Every single one of us has the power for greatness, because greatness is determined by service – to yourself and to others.
Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey
Don’t complain about what you don’t have. Use what you’ve got. To do less than your best is a sin. Every single one of us has the power for greatness, because greatness is determined by service – to yourself and to others.
The earth is a machine which yields almost gratuitous service to every application of intellect. Every plant is a manufacturer of soil. In the stomach of the plant development begins. The tree can draw on the whole air, the whole earth, on all the rolling main. The plant is all suction-pipe, imbibing from the ground by its root, from the air by its leaves, with all its might.
Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
If things are not going well with you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering, and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it.
The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.
Art | Consciousness | Pleasure | Service | Art |
What is service of the heart? This is prayer.
If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day. If you live only for yourself you are always an immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellowmen. If your ambition has the momentum of an express train at full speed, if you can no longer stop your mad rush for glory, power, or intellectual supremacy, try to divert your energies into socially useful channels before it is too late. For those who seek the larger happiness and greater effectiveness open to human beings there can be but one philosophy of life, a philosophy of constructive altruism. The truly happy man is always a fighting optimist. Optimism includes not only altruism but also social responsibility, social courage and objectivity. The good life demands a working philosophy as an orientating map of conduct. This is the golden way of life. This is the satisfying life. This is the way to be happy though human.
Altruism | Ambition | Courage | Danger | Day | Death | Ego | Fighting | Gold | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Optimism | Philosophy | Service | Will | Writing | Ambition | Danger | Happiness |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against.
Cardinal de Retz, Jean Francois-Paul de Gondil
Men who enter the service of the State should make it their chief study to set out in the world with some notable act which may strike the imagination of the people, and cause themselves to be discussed.
Cause | Imagination | Men | People | Service | Study | World |
Also those who are far from G‑d's Torah and His service... one must draw them close with strong cords of love -- perhaps one might succeed in bringing them closer to Torah and the service of G‑d. And even if one fails, one has still merited the rewards of the fulfillment of the Mitzvah, "Love your fellow."
Fulfillment | Love | Service | Torah |
The best service a book can render you is not to impart truth, but to make you think it out for yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The man of belief is necessarily a dependent man... He does not belong to himself, but to the author of the idea he believes... At every step, one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender to it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life clings otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service...faith makes blessed: consequently, it lies.
Belief | Greatness | Life | Life | Man | Service | Surrender | Trust | Truth |
Education has now become the chief problem of the world, its one holy cause. The nations that see this will survive, and those that fail to do so will slowly perish. There must be re-education of the will and of the heart as well as of the intellect, and the ideals of service must supplant those of selfishness and greed.