This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
What is your purpose? A purpose is something you discover. It's already there. It's always been there. You've lived your life by it, perhaps without fully realizing it... It is not a goal. A goal is something that can be reached. A purpose is a direction...A purpose is never achieved; it is fulfilled in each moment that you are "on purpose."... A purpose is not an affirmation. Affirmations can be created and used to make the creation real.
The only difference betwixt the natural vices and justice lies in this, that the good, which results from the former, arises from every single act, and is the object of some natural passion: whereas a single act of justice, consider’d in itself, may often be contrary to the public good; and ‘tis only the concurrence of mankind, in a general scheme or system of action, which is advantageous.
Action | Character | Good | Justice | Mankind | Object | Passion | Public | System |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
When, in our pain, we turn our attention to life’s purpose, we take up pain as a thread through the labyrinth... But when we deny pain, we are denying life itself. When we flee from pain that we cannot escape, we are fleeing from an opportunity to grow.
Attention | Character | Life | Life | Opportunity | Pain | Purpose | Purpose |
If there is freedom... there is a spiritual Reality, which it is the final end and purpose of consciousness to know; then all life is in the nature of an intelligence test, and the higher the level of awareness and the greater the potentialities of the creature, the more searchingly difficult will be the questions asked.
Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Will | Awareness |
Where is the reward of virtue? and what recompense has nature provided for such important sacrifices as those of life and fortune, which we must often make to it? O sons of earth! Are ye ignorant of the value of this celestial mistress? And do ye meanly inquire for her portion, when ye observe her genuine beauty?
Beauty | Character | Earth | Fortune | Important | Life | Life | Nature | Recompense | Reward | Virtue | Virtue | Value |
Men are not blamed for such actions as they perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Men are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditatedly than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause or principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but by asserting that actions render a person criminal merely a they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind.
Cause | Character | Consequences | Crime | Deliberation | Life | Life | Manners | Men | Mind | Principles | Reason | Repentance | Temper |
E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
The greatest humiliation in life is to work hard on something from which you expect great appreciation, and then fail to get it.
Appreciation | Character | Life | Life | Work |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
Relationships can become a doorway into a new life - surrendering, growing, giving, creating - or a revolving door which gives us movement without progress and deposits us back into ourselves, not as we could become but as we are.
We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient realization of poverty could have meant; the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paving our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly, - the more athletic trim, in short, the fighting shape.
Character | Fighting | Indifference | Life | Life | Poverty | Power | Right | Soul |
A large amount of physical pain and suffering is caused by one’s thoughts and behaviors. The desire for food causes people to overeat and consume food that is harmful to their health. Envy, anger, and honor-seeking lead to diseases of the heart, high blood pressure, nervous tension and excessive stress. Moreover, even when you pain is basically caused by physical symptoms, your mental attitude towards the pain can greatly increase or decrease the actual amount of suffering you experience. The pain you suffer from illnesses and injuries is frequently more psychological than physical. A person who learns to master a calm and serene attitude towards life trains himself to tolerate physical pain and the actual suffering is greatly lessened.
Anger | Character | Desire | Envy | Experience | Health | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Pain | People | Suffering |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
So long as we are on a search for pain-free human relationships, or shifting responsibility for all our hurt and all our fears of abandonment, or seeking ourselves in others, we have not yet found the thread that will lead us toward God, or ourselves. When we learn to accept ourselves - not just our public achievements and private successes, not just the divine being we are evolving into, but also our failures, inadequacies, cowardices and fears - then we will be able to embrace the strangers among us, because we will, finally, have embraced the stranger inside ourselves.
Character | God | Pain | Public | Responsibility | Search | Will | Learn |
It is our daily duty to consider that in all circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or otherwise, the conduct of every human being affects, more or less, the happiness of others, especially of those in the same house; and that, as life is made up, for the most part, not of great occasions, but of small everyday moments, it is the giving to those moments their greatest amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, that contributes most to the sum of human good. Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true.
Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Duty | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Peace | Security | Happiness |
It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions: the same events follow the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises, which have ever been observed among mankind.
Ambition | Avarice | Beginning | Character | Events | Generosity | Human nature | Love | Mankind | Men | Motives | Nations | Nature | Principles | Public | Self | Self-love | Society | Spirit | Uniformity | World |