This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We all would do well to entertain the possibility of new alternative realities; since it is our definition of reality that decides for each of us what is possible, and what is not possible... Our personal 'reality' is shaped by our thoughts. They determine how we perceive our future, our accomplishments, our relationships. Our emotions are our reactions to these thoughts and perceptions, and mirror our inner consciousness. They play a crucial role in our happiness and physical well-being.
Consciousness | Emotions | Future | Play | Reality | Wisdom | Happiness |
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
How easy it is to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.
John B. Tabb, fully John Banister Tabb
Every year that I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not given, the power we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.
Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Pain | Power | Prudence | Prudence | Risk | Waste | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little acts of attention.
Attention | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Wisdom | Happiness |
The pyramidal effect is essential to all the arts - the effect of starting from the level, rising to the supreme height, and sinking back to the original level again. This in truth is the meaning of key in music; in art, as in life, the secret of happiness is first of all to get as far away from home as you can, and then get back to your home: every work of art is a sort of Prodigal Son, that learns to appreciate the fixed point in space as in ethics, by straying from it.
Art | Ethics | Life | Life | Meaning | Music | Space | Truth | Wisdom | Work | Art | Happiness |
Martha Washington, fully Martha Dandridge Curtis Washington
I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
Circumstances | Experience | Happy | Wisdom | Happiness |
Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
What is happiness other than the grace of being permitted to unfold to their fullest bloom all the spiritual powers planted within us.
Intellect and industry are never incompatible. There is more wisdom, and will be more benefit, in combining them than scholars like to believe, or than the common world imagine; life has time enough for both, and its happiness will be increased by the union.
Enough | Industry | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
It may be that true happiness lies in the conviction that one has irremediably lost happiness. Then we can begin to move through life without hope or fear, capable of finally enlying all the small pleasures, which are the most lasting.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
There is no happiness without security- I mean the prospect of being able to rely on the permanence of a state into which one has settled oneself. This assurance is to be found either in the mastering of things, or in the mastering of self which makes one independent of things.
If the meaning of life is not a mystery, if leading meaningful lives is within the power of all of us, then we do not need to ask the question `What’s it all about?’ in despair. We can look around us and see the many ways in which life can be meaningful. We can see the value of happiness while accepting that it is not everything, which will make it easier for us at those times when it eludes us. We can learn to appreciate the pleasure of life without becoming slaves to appetites which can never be satisfied. We can see the value of success, while not interpreting that too narrowly, so that we can appreciate the project of striving to become what we want to be as well as the more visible, public signs of success. We can see the value of seizing the day, without leading us into a desperate scramble to grasp the ungraspable moment. We can appreciate the value in helping others lead meaningful lives, too, without thinking that altruism demands everything we have. And finally, we can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator to do anything at all.
Altruism | Day | Despair | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mystery | Need | Pleasure | Power | Public | Question | Success | Thinking | Will | Happiness | Learn | Value |
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
Glory | Government | Man | Object | Peace | War | Government | Happiness |