This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To put the temporal in the place of God, when done with full deliberation, is the sin of pride in all its gravity.
Deliberation | God | Pride | Sin |
Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL
Where are we going? We came only to be born. Our home is beyond: In the realm of the defleshed ones. 4 I suffer: Happiness, good fortune never comes my way. Have I come here to struggle in vain? This is not the place to accomplish things. Certainly nothing grows green here: Misfortune opens its blossoms.
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
There is a force within that gives you life - seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel - seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and seek that.
Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
The only place people find fulfillment is within themselves. And too often, that is the last place they look.
Fulfillment | People |
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
The roots of a child’s ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child’s having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return.
Ability | Safe | Companionship | Child |
What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall, that place among the rocks--is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A scientist had a bird in his hand. He saw that it had life and, wanting to find out in what part of the bird's body its life lay, he began dissecting the bird. The result was that the very life he was in search of disappeared. Those who try to understand the mysteries of the inner life intellectually will meet with similar failure. The life they are looking for will vanish in the analysis.
No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
Time | Worth | Friendship |
Robert H. Schuller, fully Robert Harold Schuller
The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.
Thinking |
Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil. Perhaps it is a lonely person, or an invalid - or some unfortunate inefficient, to whom you can be something. It may be an old man or it may be a child. Or some good work is in want of volunteers who will devote a free evening to it or will run on errands for it. Who can reckon up all the ways in which the priceless fund of impulse, man, is capable of exploitation! He is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some play where you may invest your humanity.
Good | Humanity | Impulse | Little | Man | Men | Play | Search | Sympathy | Time | Will | Work | Old |
Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
The primary indication… of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
This world is by definition the place where God hides Himself. It contains His light, i.e., the knowledge of Him, in a hidden way. And the purpose of life is to discover God; or as the prophet says: “to fill the world with the knowledge of God.”
God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Purpose | Purpose | World | God |