This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Disease can be the spark or gift that allows many of us to live out our personal myths and become heroes.
Disease |
Speech is the gift of all, but thought of few.
A kingdom is more easyly gotten than kept. For to get is the gift of fortune, but to keepe is the power of prudency and wisdome.
The human heart yearns for the beautiful in all ranks of life. The beautiful things that God makes are His gift to all alike. I know there are many of the poor who have fine feeling and a keen sense of the beautiful, which rusts out and dies because they are too hard pressed to procure it any gratification.
A friend’s only gift is himself, and friendship is not friendship, it is not a form of free or liberal society, if it does not terminate in an ideal possession, in an object loved for its own sake. Such objects can be ideas only, not forces, for forces are subterranean and instrumental things, having only such value as they borrow from their ulterior effects and manifestations... We are not to look now for what makes friendship useful, but for whatever may be found in friendship that may lend utility to life.
Friend | Ideas | Life | Life | Object | Society | Friendship | Value |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
It is a gift to be able to paint a particular picture or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of the arts.
Day |
Art is the gift of God, and must be used in His Glory.
Jean Anouilh, fully Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh
Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
Love |
To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.
Accident | Chance | Design | Envy | Happy | Preference | Riches | Wisdom | Riches | Happiness |
Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get out of all things and all persons.
Man |
The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used, will be a gift also to his race.
This, I believe, is the great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else's. In the traditional Orient, on the other hand, and generally in all traditionally grounded societies, the individual is cookie-molded. His duties are put upon him in exact and precise terms, and there's no way of breaking out from them. When you go to a guru to be guided on a spiritual path, he knows just where you are on the traditional path, just where you have to go next, just what you must do to get there.
Experience | Fulfillment | Individual | Truth | Unique | Will | World |
We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
There are eight degrees in almsgiving… Supreme above all is to give assistance to a fellow man who has fallen on evil times by presenting him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or procuring him work, thereby helping him to become self-supporting. Next best is giving alms in such a way that the giver and recipient are unknown to each other. This is, indeed, the performance of a commandment from disinterested motives.
Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel
Earthly life is an eternal miracle. In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand. This is the gift given to creative individuals who can identify with the mysteries of life through art. It is a divine gift, this spirit of humanity. It is the fight for light over shadow.
Art | Eternal | Eternity | Grace | Humanity | Life | Life | Light | Spirit |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.