This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusion in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work.
Body | Day | Death | Good | Illusion | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nothing | Work | Think |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is no better indication of a man’s character than the company which he keeps.
Proximity to death wakes us up. Death dispels the most potent illusion about life – that it belongs to us, and that we have all the time to we need to arrange it the way we want. But in many ways it is a gift that our life is limited, impermanent. We hold it more dear because this is so.
We hunger for a kind of group association in which, through being ourselves, we may get to something greater than ourselves. We long to touch the transcendent, and, furthermore, to do it in the company of others who, by sharing our experiences, verify and confirm them.
Association | Hunger | Association |
Françoise Sagan, born Francoise Quoirez
The illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but the exact opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
There isn’t one senior manager in this company who hasn’t been associated with a product that flopped. That includes me. It’s like learning to ski. If you’re not falling, your not learning.
Learning |
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
A great illusion of lovers is to believe that the intensity of their sexual attraction is the guarantee of the perpetuity of their love. It is because of this failure to distinguish between the glandular and the spiritual… that marriages are so full of deception.
Distinguish | Failure | Guarantee | Illusion | Love | Failure |
Time and again, the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations - in short, by metaphysics.
Illusion | Man | Metaphysics | Passion | Thought | Time | Understanding | World |
James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras
Leaders die, products become obsolete, markets change, new technologies emerge, and management fads come and go, but core ideology in a great company endures as a source of guidance and inspiration.
Change | Guidance | Inspiration | Guidance |
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
Old |
The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may be.
Age | Loneliness |
Antonio Machado, fully Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz
Wherever learning breeds specialists, the sum of human culture is enhanced thereby. That is the illusion and consolation of specialists.
Consolation | Culture | Illusion | Learning |
Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |
According to the true nature of things, everyone has all the sufferings of the world as his own; indeed, he has to look upon all merely possible sufferings as actual for him, so long as he is the firm and constant will-to-live, in other words, affirms life with all his strength. For the knowledge that sees through the principium individuationis, a happy life in time, given by chance or won from it by shrewdness, amid the sufferings of innumerable others, is only a beggar’s dream, in which he is a king, but from which he must awake, in order to realize that only a fleeting illusion had separated him from the suffering of his life.
Chance | Happy | Illusion | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Order | Strength | Suffering | Time | Will | Words | World |