This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
Emotions | Feelings | Life | Life | Pleasure | Right | Rights |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.
Things to remember: 1) The worth of character; 2) The improvement of talent; 3) The influence of example; 4) The joy of origination; 5) The dignity of simplicity; 6) The success of perseverance... More things to remember: 7) The value of time; 8) The pleasure of working; 9) The obligation of duty; 10) The power of kindness; 11) The wisdom of economy; 12) The virtue of patience.
Dignity | Improvement | Influence | Joy | Obligation | Pleasure | Power | Success | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Worth | Value |
Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
Pleasure |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.
All pleasure is social…It springs from alienation. Even when enjoyment is ignorant of the prohibition it infringes, it owes its origin to civilization, to the fixed order from which it yearns to return to the very nature from which that order protects it. Only when dream absolves them of the compulsion of work, of the individual’s attachment to a particular social function and finally to a self, leading back to a primal state free of domination and discipline, do human beings feel the magic of pleasure…Thought arose in the course of liberation from terrible nature, which is finally subjugated utterly. Pleasure, so to speak, is nature’s revenge. In it human beings divest themselves of thought, escape from civilization. In earlier societies such home-coming was provided by communal festivals. Primitive orgies are the collective origin of pleasure.
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
Touched by an Angel. We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Courage | Fear | Light | Loneliness | Love | Pleasure | Will |
Figures themselves, in their symmetrical and inexorable order, have their mistakes like words and speeches. An hour of pleasure and an hour of pain are alike only on the dial in their numerical arrangement. Outside the dial they lie sixty times.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
The pleasure and the pain, experienced in the life on earth, the success or failure, which attend it, the attainments and obstacles, with which it is strewed, the friends and foes, which make their appearance in it, are all deter-mined by the Karma of past lives. Karmic deter-mination is popularly designated as fate. Fate however is not some foreign and oppressive principle. Fate is man's own creation pursuing him from past lives: and just as it has been shaped by past Karma, it can also be modified, remoulded and even undone, through Karma in the present life.
Appearance | Fate | Life | Life | Past | Pleasure | Present | Success | Fate | Friends |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
In life after death, the experiences of pain and pleasure become much more intense than what they were in the earthly life. And These subjective states of intensified suffering and joy are respectively called hell and heaven. Hell and heaven are states, of the mind; they should not be looked upon as being places; and, though, from the subjective point of view, they mean a great deal for the individualised soul, they are both illusions within the greater illusion of the phenomenal world.
Heaven | Hell | Illusion | Joy | Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Suffering |
Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you desire from what you do. If you are in a job you hate, face the fact squarely and get out.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Desire is the root of relationships based on utility or pleasure-desire for money, fame, or power, desire for bodily pleasure of one sort or another. In sharp contrast, in relationships based on the excellence of the persons involved, love is fundamental and is the root or source of whatever desire comes to exist.
Desire | Excellence | Love | Pleasure | Excellence |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
There are seven things that will destroy us [seven sins of the world]: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics.
Business | Destroy | Knowledge | Pleasure | Politics | Religion | Science | Wealth | Will | Business |