This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.
All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.
Art | Effort | Giving | Looks | Meaning | Mystery | Title | Art |
The Enneagram is a psychological and spiritual system with roots in ancient traditions. Traces of it can be found in Sufism, Judaism, and specifically, in the seven capital tendencies of early Christianity. These seven capital tendencies, anger, pride, envy, avarice, gluttony, lust, and sloth, along with two general traits everyone shares, deceit and fear, make up the nine personality types of the Enneagram. Each personality type on the nine-pointed star of the Enneagram can be seen as a pointer to a constellation of tendencies, perspectives, and habitual perceptions characteristic to each type. In Enneagram study, these constellations of motivation are called passions, and each one colors how we experience ourselves, our relationships and the world around us. The purpose of Enneagram studies is gain insight into how these passions and compulsions operate in ourselves and others, thereby fostering self-understanding and empathy, giving rise to improved relationships.
Deceit | Experience | Giving | Insight | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | System | World |
All of us have to recognize that we owe our children more than we have been giving them.
Joris-Karl "J.K." Huysmans, pseudonym for Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans
The belief that man is an irresolute creature pulled this way and that by two forces of equal strength, alternately winning and losing the battle for his soul; the conviction that human life is nothing more than an uncertain struggle between heaven and hell; the faith in two opposed entities, Satan and Christ - all this was bound to engender those internal discords in which the soul, excited by the incessant fighting, stimulated as it were by the constant promises and threats, ends up by giving in and prostitutes itself to whichever of the two combatants has been more obstinate in its pursuit.
Battle | Belief | Ends | Faith | Giving | Heaven | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Satan | Struggle | Winning |
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
J. R. Miller, fully James Russell Miller
We speak much of the duty of making others happy. No day should pass, we say, on which we do not put a little cheer into some discouraged heart, make the path a little smoother for someone’s tired feet, or help some fainting robin unto its nest again. This is right. We cannot put too great emphasis upon the duty of giving happiness and cheer to others. But it is no less a duty that we should be happy and cheerful ourselves.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
No man has ever yet desired to pray without ceasing, asked for that grace earnestly, and done everything suggested by God for its bestowal, without having obtained it. To suppose such a thing would be manifest absurdity. For who is it who gives you the desire? God, of course. Does He give it you in order that it may stay unfulfilled? That is impossible. He implants within you a desire for something with the intention of giving you that very thing; He will infallibly give it you if you ask for it in the right way; and He begs you, He urges you, He assists you to make the petition.
Desire | Giving | God | Grace | Intention | Man | Order | Right | Will | God |
John Blofeld, fully John Eaton Calthorpe Blofeld
If being wealthy is taken to mean having the means to satisfy one's every want, all but the very poor can become rich as thou at a single stroke of a magician's wand, simply by ceasing to want more than is really necessary for sustaining life. By being content with little and not giving a rap for what the neighbours think, one can attain a very large measure of freedom, shedding care and worry in a trice.
The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?
Within even the most social group there are many relations that are not as yet social. A large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools, mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and child, teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and governed, remain upon this level, they form no true social group, no matter how closely their respective activities touch one another. Giving and taking of orders modifies actions and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.
Giving | Superiority | Parent | Teacher |
To celebrate is to contemplate the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity of the self. What was shall not be again... Every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal. How to welcome the moment? How to respond to the marvel? The cardinal sin is in our failure not to sense the grandeur of the moment, the marvel and mystery of being, the possibility of quiet exaltation. The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state - it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for that which one needs or honors... inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts.
Attention | Failure | Giving | Lending | Man | Meaning | Mystery | Pleasure | Power | Quiet | Receive | Respect | Reverence | Sense | Sin | Singularity | Time | Respect | Failure |
Man’s task is to reconcile liberty with service, reason with faith. This is the deepest wisdom man can attain. It is our destiny to serve, to surrender. We have to conquer in order to succumb; we have to acquire in order to give away; we have to triumph in order to be overwhelmed. Man has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept. The aspiration is to obtain; the perfection is to dispense. This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for this act of giving away is reciprocity on man’s part for God’s gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die.
Aspiration | Death | Destiny | Giving | Liberty | Man | Meaning | Order | Perfection | Pious | Reason | Reciprocity | Will | Wisdom | Aspiration | Privilege | Understand |
The deepest wisdom man can attain is to know that his destiny is to aid, to serve. We have to conquer in order to succumb; we have to acquire in order to give away; we have to triumph in order to be overwhelmed. Man has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept. The aspiration is to obtain; the perfection is to dispense. This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for the act of giving away is reciprocity on man’s part for God’s gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die.
Aspiration | Death | Destiny | Giving | Man | Meaning | Order | Perfection | Pious | Reciprocity | Will | Wisdom | Aspiration | Privilege | Understand |
People are an organization's only appreciable asset, but creative people are an organization's most needed asset. Be willing to absorb some risk and failures to allow people freedom to express themselves. Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken. Handle the ideas of your people carefully: If an idea is half-developed but has potential, pass it to the people in your organization who are proven process thinkers and implementers. Sometimes giving your people permission to be creative is not enough; inspire them by modeling creativity. The word 'reactive' and the word 'creative' are made up of exactly the same letters; the only difference between the two is that you 'c' (see) differently.
Freedom | Giving | Ideas | Need | Organization | People | Risk | Thinkers |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of.
Control | Freedom | Giving | Important | Law | Nothing | Right | Sense | Think |
Joyce Grenfell, fully Joyce Irene Grenfell née Phipps
I have come to believe that giving and receiving are really the same. Giving and receiving - not giving and taking.
Giving |