This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
Every time you give a bit of yourself and you plant a little seed of Future Happiness. All the rest of your life these seeds will keep springing up unexpectedly along your path. When you need a friend to give you a lift in some situation, likely as not along will come a person for whom you did something thoughtful when you were a youngster. Taking up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will live a happy life. What is more, because you do so many wonderful thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality - gracious, friendly, likable.
Friend | Future | Giving | Happy | Impulse | Life | Life | Little | Need | Personality | Rest | Time | Will |
If you rest in the stillness like a broken gong, you have already reached heaven, for anger has left you.
Our society has progressed largely because of our creativity and inquisitiveness – and because we’re competitive. We’re driven by the desire to develop products and services which are more ingenious than what others have put forth. Competition is inherently good, but when it is tainted with excess greed or negative motives, there can be harmful results. How we compete is very important to our Souls.
Competition | Creativity | Desire | Excess | Good | Greed | Important | Inquisitiveness | Motives | Society | Society |
I believe that, for the rest of the world, contemporary America is an almost symbolic concentration of all the best and the worst of our civilization. On the one hand, there are its profound commitment to enhancing civil liberty and to maintaining the strength of its democratic institutions, and the fantastic developments in science and technology which have contributed so much to our well-being; on the other, there is the blind worship of perpetual economic growth and consumption, regardless of their destructive impact on the environment, or how subject they are to the dictates of materialism and consumerism, or how they, through the omnipresence of television and advertising, promote uniformity, and banality instead of a respect for human uniqueness.
Advertising | Civilization | Commitment | Growth | Liberty | Materialism | Omnipresence | Respect | Rest | Science | Strength | Technology | Television | Uniformity | World | Worship | Respect |
We are living at a time when humankind can face whatever threatens it only if we, by which I mean each of us, manage to revive, with new energy and new ethos, a sense of responsibility for the rest of the world.
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good… Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons… Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather and ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Ability | Chance | Good | Hope | Joy | Mind | Observation | Sense | Success | Will | Work | World |
What is hateful to you don’t do to another. This is the whole Torah [i.e., Law]; the rest is commentary.
Purpose directs decision making. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told, I suppose, simplifies life.
The saint’s willingness to suffer results in an integrated, balanced personality; it liberates the capacity for love.
Capacity | Love | Personality |
Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?
Change | Culture | Earth | Government | Heaven | Honor | Human race | Life | Life | Peace | People | Race | Rest | Rites |
Purpose directs decision making. We look for leaders with vision, people who can imagine possible futures, describe desirable ideals, then tell us how they might be achieved. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told simplifies life.
Decision | Ideals | Life | Life | People | Purpose | Purpose | Vision |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.