This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Generosity’s aim is twofold: we give freely to others, and we give freely to ourselves. Without both aspects, the experience is incomplete. If we give a gift freely, without attachment to a certain result or expectation of what will come back to us, that exchange celebrates freedom both within ourselves as the giver and the receiver… In a moment of pure giving, we really become one.
Expectation | Experience | Freedom | Generosity | Giving | Will | Expectation |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free.
Meanings track relationships… Our lives become intrinsically valuable to us by becoming instrumentally valuable to others. Meaning can be our gift to each other.
Meaning |
The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves.
Giving |
When our wills are united with the will of God, we never take all the goodness and beauty and people and things in life for granted, but we accept them again and again as a gift from him – given that we may serve him with still greater joy and thank him for it.
Beauty | God | Joy | Life | Life | People | Will | Wills | Beauty |
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
Excellence | Excellence |
Frank Barron, Alfonso Montuori & Anthea Barron
Creativity is a gift, some say, but not a gift that survives without practice.
Creativity | Practice |
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.
Change | Mind | Problems | Sacred | Society | Thinking | Will | World | Society |
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams.
One can pay back the gift of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind.
True love begins when nothing is looked for in return. And if the habit of prayer is seen to be so important for teaching a man to love his fellow men, this is because no answer is given to his prayers. Your love is based on hatred when you wrap yourself up in a certain man or woman on whom you batten as a stock of food laid by and, like dogs snarling at teach other round their trough, you fall to hating anyone who casts even a glance at your repast. you call it love, this selfish appetite. No sooner is love bestowed on you than (even as in your false friendships) you convert this free gift into servitude and bondage and, from the very moment you are loved, you begin to fancy yourself wronged.
Appetite | Habit | Important | Love | Man | Men | Nothing | Prayer | Servitude | Teach | Woman |
The acceptance of the risk of death and the acceptance of death are very different... The acceptance of the risk of death is the acceptance of life; and love of danger is love of life... The acceptance of risk is a gift you make yourself.
Acceptance | Danger | Death | Life | Life | Love | Risk | Danger |
The greatest gift that extraordinarily successful people have over the average person is their ability to get themselves to take action.
What you are is God’s gift to you; what you make of yourself is your gift to God.
God |