This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In slave labor, even that part of the working day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labor for his master. All the slaves labor appears as unpaid labor.
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Humanity is the peculiar characteristic of great minds; little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the exact pleasure of forgiving their enemies.
The soul is an embryo in the body of man, and the day of death is the day of awakening, for it is the great era of labour and the rich hour of creation... Death is an ending to the son of the earth, but to the soul it is the start, the triumph of life... Death removes but the touch, and not the awareness of all good. And he who has lived one spring or more possesses the spiritual life of one who has lived a score of springs.
Awakening | Awareness | Body | Day | Death | Earth | Era | Good | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Awareness |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
A positive emotional state entrains, or unites, our systems for thought, feeling, and action; shifts our concentration and energy toward support of our intellectual and creative forebrain (old mammalian and neocortex); and allows us to both learn and remember easily. In very young children, the primary caregiver’s emotional state determines the child’s state, and therefore the child’s development in general. Any kind of negative response, any form of fear or anger shifts our attention and energy from verbal-intellectual brain to our oldest survival brain. This shift shortchanges our intellect, cripples our learning and memory, and can lock our neocortex into service of our lower brain.
Action | Anger | Attention | Children | Energy | Fear | Learning | Memory | Service | Survival | Thought | Learn |
Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something... Anger is meant to be listened to... Anger is not the action itself. It is action's invitation.
Life is growth - a challenge of environment. If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then this splendid balance of cosmic forces which we call life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction. Therefore, health is the most precious of all things.
Balance | Challenge | Day | Equanimity | Growth | Health | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pleasure |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Lord, let me make this rule to think of life as school, and try my best to stand each test, and do my work and nothing shirk. Should someone else outshine this dullard head of mine, should I be sad? I will be glad. To do my best is Thy behest. Some day the bell will sound, some day my heart will bound, as that with a shout, that school is out and lessons done, I homeward run.
Day | Heart | Life | Life | Lord | Nothing | Rule | Sound | Will | Work | Think |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Have you ever had your day suddenly turn sunshiny because of a cheerful word? Have you ever wondered if this could be the same world because someone had been unexpectedly kind to you? You can make today the same for somebody. It is only a question of a little imagination, a little time and trouble. Think now, "What can I do today to make someone happy?"
Day | Happy | Imagination | Little | Question | Time | World | Think |
Margaret Thatcher, fully Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.
The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist - this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul - a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.
Art | Day | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Music | Past | Play | Present | Soul | Art |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
A righteous person once asked, “On which day of your life did you experience the greatest amount of joy?” The righteous man replied, “It was the day when I traveled on a ship and someone greatly humiliated me. He treated me with ultimate disgrace. Nevertheless I did not feel even a drop of resentment. I experienced great joy that I reached such a level that no insult could cause me any pain.”
Cause | Day | Disgrace | Experience | Insult | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Resentment | Insult |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them. Every one must be challenged. A day dawns, quite like other days; in it a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us. To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet the supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised.
Just as a mountain is constantly being shaped by weather, our character can be reformed by our choices. Our human capacity to reason and choose makes the formation of our character an ongoing process. Each day we can decide to be different.
Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning, and if God comes at the end, such a life is sacred.
Day | God | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Meaning | Power | Sacred | God | Happiness |
Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they; to God’s word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else.
Beauty | Day | God | Health | Lord | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | People | Rest | Riches | Skill | Understanding | Wisdom | Riches | Beauty | God |
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith’. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressible sweet in greater love.
Day | Faith | God | Grace | Hate | Justice | Love | Meaning | Mercy | Paradise | Righteousness | Scripture | God |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The soul has nothing in common with anything else. It is unconscious of the yesterday or the day before, and of tomorrow and the day after, for in eternity there is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence, and is at this moment, and as it will be after death.