This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A time is envisioned when the world was not, only a watery chaos (the dark, indistinguishable sea ) and a warm cosmic breath, which could give an impetus of life.
All good, intellectual people come together at one place and try to bring harmony by means of exchange of thoughts and ideas. When all of them unite they progress rapidly and attain their aims. The external forces cannot harm them in any way.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be a surprise enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation. He was a surgeon and had once been an assistant on the staff of a large hospital. So I once tried to get him to smile by describing to him how he would be unable to lose the habits of camp life when he returned to his former work. On the building site (especially when the supervisor made his tour of inspection) the foreman encouraged us to work faster by shouting: 'Action! Action!' I told my friend, 'One day you will be back in the operating room, performing a big abdominal operation. Suddenly an orderly will rush in announcing the arrival of the senior surgeon by shouting, Action! Action!'
Indispensable | Knowledge | Meaning | Nothing | Search | Wisdom | Words |
One gets good and bad results according to the good and bad deeds performed.
By enthusiasm one acquire unimaginable strength. – Rig Veda
A devotee, who spends his time in austerities has nothing to worry about as God fulfills all his needs.
Enlightenment | Knowledge | Intellect |
People on the righteous path always progress, while people who are ignorant always falter and regress.
By the Grace of the Saints, I sing the Praises of the Ocean of virtue; after countless incarnations, I have been released.
One, who does not cast evil eyes on her 'own' house... who does not have malevolence towards her husband... giver of joy...seeker of family's welfare... who treads on the righteous path... gives happiness to all... serves all... gives birth to good sons... keeps her brother-in-laws satisfied and gives nourishing food...May such a wife help us attain prosperity.
Knowledge | Prosperity | Wishes | Happiness |
Anybody trying to become an efficient ruler should try to imbibe all these good qualities.
We should never have any kind of malevolence towards our friends.
Do not tremble in fear but become strong and courageous instead.
Contemplation | Evil | Knowledge | Wisdom | Contemplation |
There are three types of persons: those, who confess their own faults and mention the excellence of others, are the highest type; those, who highlight their own excellence and decry the faults of others, are worse; those, who parade their own faults as excellence and deride the excellence in others as faults, are the worst. The last type is nowadays most rampant.
Ignorant and naïve people should try to acquire maximum knowledge from the knowledgeable ones.
Experience | Knowledge |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord. It might to keep it open.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.
Enough | Ideas | Knowledge | Law | Respect | Society | Theories | Society | Respect |
What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how, and to whom to say things.
Experience | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nothing | Prosperity | Will | Learn |