This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To live is to understand. To live is to smile at the present, to look toward posterity over the wall.
In the Twentieth Century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead; man will live. He will possess something higher than all these-a great country, the whole earth, and a great hope, the whole heaven.
Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.
The peculiarity of prudery is to multiply sentinels, in proportion as the fortress is less threatened.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
Dawn | Existence | Light | Protest | Question | Reason | Spirit | Time | Work |
You have suffered greatly, poor mother. Oh! do not lament, you have now the portion of the elect. It is in this way that mortals become angels. It is not their fault; they do not know how to set about it otherwise. This hell from which you have come out is the first step towards Heaven. We must begin by that.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
Light |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent.
Beginning | Light | Mind | Nothing | Thinking | Time | Wife |
Bring hither by thy shouts, O lord of wealth, the suitor, bend his mind towards her; turn thou the right side of every agreeable suitor towards (her).
The earth holds the fool and holds the wise, endures that good and bad dwell (upon her); she keeps company with the boar, gives herself up to the wild hog.
I cannot describe Your Manifestations, O Treasure of Excellence, O Giver of peace. God is Inaccessible, Incomprehensible and Imperishable; He is known through the Perfect Guru.
Good thoughts inspire us to engage in good actions.
It is all God, an expression of His Majesty. Derive joy from the springs of joy within you and without you; advance, do not stand still or recede.
This is the reason why we should try to bring unison in thoughts, words and deeds because it is of prime importance for the welfare of society as well as nation.
The Supreme Lord God is Merciful to the meek; meditating in remembrance on Him, peace is obtained.
Light |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Dangerous! Vea laughed radiantly. What an utterly marvelous compliment! Why am I dangerous, Shevek? Why, because you know that in the eyes of men you are a thing, a thing owned, bought, sold. And so you think only of tricking the owners, of getting revenge.