This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The noblest mind the best contentment has.
Contentment | Mind | Wisdom |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
If the principles of contentment are not within us, the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man's stature as to his happiness.
Contentment | Man | Principles | Will | Wisdom |
Tarthang Tulku, fully Tarthang Tulku Künga Gelek Yeshe Dorje
Complete health and awakening are really the same.
The best definition of wealth - the only true definition, I think - is the possession of whatever gives us happiness, contentment or a sense of one's significance in the scheme of things.
Contentment | Sense | Wealth | Wisdom | Think |
If meditation is aimed at curing an illness the practicer should forget all about the thought of curing it, and if it is for improving health he should forget all about the idea of improvement, because when mind and objects are forgotten everything will be void and the result thus achieved will be the proper one... If the thoughts of curing an illness and of improving health are clung to the mind will be stirred and no result can be expected.
Health | Improvement | Meditation | Mind | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
Viewing health as something to achieve gives rise to effort and striving, which create stress. And this can interfere with the natural healing tendencies already present within us. The meditative traditions see things differently; they regard health as intrinsic to our nature, and thus already fully present within us... Dis-ease results from a loss of connection with our intrinsic health, caused by ignorance, distraction or confusion.
Effort | Health | Ignorance | Nature | Present | Regard | Wisdom | Loss |
The time we spend on earth is but one tick of the eternal clock in an unending eternity. We are here in mortality for a brief moment and then on to the next stage of our development. It does not matter how many trials we have in life, just how we handle them. It does not matter how long we live, just how we live. How can we appreciate eternal good health if we have never experienced sickness, pain, or disease? How can we appreciate eternal joy if we have never experienced disappointment, hardship, or failure? How can we appreciate living forever if we have never known death?
Death | Disease | Earth | Eternal | Eternity | Failure | Good | Health | Joy | Life | Life | Pain | Time | Trials |
Like any other major experience, illness actually changes us. How? Well for one thing we are temporarily relieved from the pressure of meeting the world head on. We enter a world of introspection and self-analysis. We think soberly, perhaps for the first time, about our past and future. Illness gives us that rarest thing in the world--a second chance, not only at health, but at life itself!
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
We are capable of finding unending meaning in a world of constant, shimmering, sometimes threatening change. The task is to keep the question of life in question, and to find in it an unending source of joy and possibility, even in the darkest of times. It is within the constant overcoming of our own limitations and habits, and of the established views of our age, that passive happiness and unreflective contentment are lost, then to be replaced by joyful activity and a glimpse of a broader, more enriching, and more responsible awareness than we have been capable of before.
Age | Awareness | Change | Contentment | Joy | Life | Life | Meaning | Question | World | Awareness | Happiness |
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
The medical establishment, focusing on pathology and chemical treatment by drugs, has long equated diet with what’s put on hospital trays. Even today, when five of America’s major health problems – heart, liver, cancer, diabetes and cerebrovascular diseases – have been proved to be related to diet, just 23 percent of American medical schools require a course in nutrition, and many offer none.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove.
Contentment | Grief | Human nature | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Waste | Will | Happiness |