This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for our comfort, an even necessities. Thus, disease, opening our dyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
Duc de Lévis, fully Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis
Boredom is a sickness the cure for which is work; pleasure is only a palliative.
The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one; it must husband its resources to live. But health answers its own ends, and has to spare; runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.
The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one; it must husband its resources to live.
We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns.
Health |
There is only one cure for the melancholic sickness of love: enter into it with abandon.
Love |
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
Age |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
There is no worse sickness for the soul,O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection. The heart and eyes must bleed a lot before self-complacency falls away.
Heart |
Lawrence Durrell, fully Lawrence George Durrell
Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.
Laughter, whether reconciled or terrible, always accompanies the moment when a fear is ended. It indicates a release, whether from physical danger or from the grip of logic. Reconciled laughter resounds with an echo of esc ape from power; wrong laughter copes with fear by defecting the agencies which inspire it…In wrong society laughter is a sickness infecting happiness and drawing into societie’s worthless totality…What is infernal about wrong laughter is that it compellingly parodies what is best…The culture industry replaces pain, which is present in ecstacy no less than in asceticism, with jovial denial. Its supreme law is that its consumers shall at no price be given what they desire.
Culture | Danger | Fear | Industry | Laughter | Law | Present | Price | Society | Wrong | Society | Danger | Happiness |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
Indomitable perseverance is the highest offering to my Guru. The best way to please Him is to endure the hardship of meditation! Abiding in this cave, alone, is the noblest service to the Dakinis! To devote myself to the Holy Dharma is the best service to Buddhism -- to devote my life to meditation, thus to aid my helpless, sentient fellow beings! To love death and sickness is a blessing through which to cleanse one's sins; to refuse forbidden food helps one to attain realization and enlightenment; to repay my Father Guru's bounties I meditate, and meditate again.
Aid | Death | Father | Life | Life | Love | Service | Hardship |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
If you have faith in that one treasure which is God, His truth, and the wealth of His grace, if you assume His good qualities and His actions, God will always be with you. Whether you feel happy or sad, in sickness or in health, in sunshine or in rain, His wealth will always be yours and will always give you peace, happiness, and comfort any time you need it. This is the only thing which can protect you and take care of you. Nothing else is of any use. You must, therefore, have faith in God, the One Treasure, who is always with you, who always takes care of you. He is your shade in the heat of the sun. He is an umbrella in the rain and the happiness in your sorrow. He is always there to help you in any situation.
Care | Comfort | Faith | God | Good | Happy | Need | Nothing | Qualities | Time | Wealth | Will | God | Happiness |
Bompu Zen, being free from any philosophic or religious content, is for anybody and everybody. It is a Zen practiced purely in the belief that it can improve both physical and mental health. Since it can almost certainly have no ill effects, anyone can undertake it, whatever religious beliefs they happen to hold or if they hold none at all. Bompu Zen is bound to eliminate sickness of a psychosomatic nature and to improve the health generally.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.
Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
In time of sickness the soul collects itself anew.
Man has inherited a tendency to fear, from his primitive ancestors. But so has he received other deleterious characteristics which, however, he has succeeded in destroying through a process of repression. Man possesses in his potential make-up all the proclivities of his countless progenitors, from the dweller of the cave to the citizen of the civilized world ; and yet he retains only those which best fit him for the environment in which he finds himself. The other propensities are starved out through lack of nutriment and encouragement. Fear in prehistoric ages, when men and beast met in sudden and fatal encounters, had a vital function. But to-day it has outlived its protective significance and serves only as a generator of sickness and destroyer of mankind. The persistence of fear in man is simply due to man's failure to arm himself against it and drive it from the domain of his consciousness.
Failure | Fear | Man | Men | Persistence | World | Failure |