This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
Besides its precious work, which makes the eye superior to every other organ of the body, it is the expression of the beauty of body, mind and soul. Sufis, therefore, symbolize the eye by a cup of wine. Through the eyes, the secret hidden in man's heart is reflected into the heart of another. However much a person may try to conceal his secret, yet the reader can read it in his eyes, and can read there his pleasure, his displeasure, his joy, and his sorrow. A seer can see still farther. The seer can see the actual condition of man's soul through his eyes, his grade of evolution, his attitude in life, his outlook on life, and his condition, both hidden and manifest. Besides, to the passive soul of a disciple, knowledge, ecstasy, spiritual joy, and divine peace, all are given through the glance. One sees in everyday life that a person who is laughing in his mind with his lips closed can express his laughter through his glance, and the one who receives the glance at once catches the infectious mirth. Often the same happens through looking in the eyes of the sorrowful, in a moment one becomes filled with depression. And those whose secret is God, whose contemplation is the perfection of beauty, whose joy is endless in the realization of everlasting life, and from whose heart the spring of love is ever flowing, it is most appropriate that their glance should be called, symbolically, the Bowl of Saki, the Bowl of the Wine-Giver.
Beauty | Contemplation | Heart | Joy | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Perfection | Soul | Beauty | Contemplation |
But passive compassion alone is not enough to achieve victory in the struggle against inhumanity. A Buddhist story that illustrates the inadequacy of the mere feeling of compassion tells of a mother with paralyzed arms who helplessly watched her child being swept away along a fast-flowing river. Those who are compassionate but who do not possess the wisdom to find the means of relieving the sufferings of their fellow human beings are compared to that mother. Meaningful compassion has to be active; it must seek the means to bring comfort to those who are in need of succor. Wisdom is necessary to enable us to discover those means.
Comfort | Compassion | Enough | Means | Mother | Need | Story | Struggle | Wisdom | Child |
Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL
That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.
You can have a lot more leverage in this country in another way, and that is by determining the margin of victory between Democrats and Republicans. It's not a spoiler role, it's a leverage role.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
A man thinks, 'I have practiced a little prayer and austerity; so I have gained a victory over others.' But victory and defeat lie with God. I have seen a prostitute dying in the Ganges and retaining consciousness1 to the end.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
At the top of a hill our automobile stuck in a snowdrift. Peasants ran out of a cottage nearby, shouting with laughter because machinery had made a fool of itself, and dug out the automobile with incredible rapidity. They were doubtless anxious to get back and tell a horse about it.
Laughter |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
That so much time was wasted in this pain. Ten thousand years ago he might have let off down To not return again! A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips; The laughter sets him free. A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries. The Fool is me! And with one final shake of laughter Breaks his bonds
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
Whatever happens, never forget that people would rather be led to perdition by a man, than to victory by a woman.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
The intimate relation between humor and faith is derived from the fact that both deal with the incongruities of our existence. Humor is concerned with the immediate incongruities of life and faith with ultimate ones. Both humor and faith are the expressions of the freedom of the human spirit, of its capacity to stand outside of life, and itself, and view the whole scene. But any view of the whole immediately creates the problem of how the incongruities of life are to be dealt with; for the effort to understand the life, and our place in it, confronts us with inconsistencies and incongruities which do not fit into any neat picture of the whole. Laughter is our reaction to immediate incongruities and those which do not affect us essentially. Faith is the only possible response to the ultimate incongruities of existence which threaten the very meaning of our life.
Capacity | Effort | Existence | Faith | Freedom | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |
Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
I live by this credo: Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter had always brought me out of unhappy situations. Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to laugh about if you try hard enough.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
In particular, [my mother] had a wonderful sense of humor, and I learned from her that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
Laughter | Sense | Understanding |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing
Adventure | Ends | Experience | History | Laughter | Life | Life | Majority | Man | Mystery | Sense | Universe | Understand |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Attack and defense, want and war, victory and defeat, lordship and thraldom, all sealed with the seal of blood: this from henceforth is the History of Man.
History |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
The peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people, but the peace that comes with healing in its wings; with compassion for those who have suffered; with understanding for those who have opposed us; with the opportunity for all the peoples of this earth to choose their own destiny.
Compassion | Earth | Opportunity | Peace | Understanding |