This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Your highest happiness lies in your being ever ready in desiring to learn, and to behave properly. The more you improve yourself, the more you will elevate others around you. The self-improving man is the increasingly happy man.
Sharpen your thinking about goal setting. Be realistic about the amount of time and effort that might be necessary. Make a commitment to excellence. Learn to distinguish between a goal and a wish. Prepare for ultimate goals by achieving your interim goals. Choose goals that will benefit others as well as yourself.
Commitment | Distinguish | Effort | Excellence | Goals | Thinking | Time | Will | Learn |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Persons of strong character are usually the happiest. They do not blame others for troubles that can usually be traced to their own actions and lack of understanding. They know that no one has any power to add to their happiness or detract from it unless they themselves are so weak that they allow the adverse thoughts and wicked actions of others to affect them.
Blame | Character | Power | Troubles | Understanding | Happiness |
“Every morning of the world I give thanks for all the wonderful things in my life,” declared a young man enthusiastically. “And do you know something? It’s strange indeed, but the more I give thanks, the more I have reason to be thankful. For, you see, blessings just pile up on me one after another like nobody’s business”... The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for... The attitude of gratitude revitalizes the entire mental process by activating all other attitudes, thus stimulating creativity... Remember that praise and thanksgiving are the most powerful prayers of all.
Art | Blessings | Business | Creativity | Gratitude | Life | Life | Man | Practice | Praise | Reason | Thankfulness | World | Art |
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition to the development of our consciousness.
Competition | Consciousness | Knowledge | Myth | Self | Theories |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Even while striving to improve yourself, learn to stand alone, secure in your own virtues and self-worth. If you want others to believe in you, remember, it isn’t only your words that have an effect, but what you are and what you feel within - what is in your soul.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Happiness lies in making others happy, in forsaking self-interest to bring joy to others... To live for self is the source of all misery.
Happy | Joy | Self | Self-interest |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Those who are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.
Then I must surely be right in saying that we shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognize the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations.
Greatness | Honor | Men | Qualities | Right | Will | Wisdom |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
If our own conscience protests and refuses to accept praise then it is proof against the flatterer.
Conscience | Need | Praise | World |
It’s about whether we’re going to be able to look forward to our descendants and hand this world over to them in much better shape, so they will look back on us with kindness and with praise – rather than cursing us for our apathy, or our narcissism, or our refusal to stand up tall for justice and freedom in the world.
Apathy | Better | Freedom | Justice | Kindness | Praise | Will | World |
Do not unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. That is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary.
Rest |
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.
Our happiness depends more on what we think of ourselves than on what others think of us.