This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To teach a man how he may grow independently, and for himself, is perhaps the greatest service that one man can do for another.
Of all the passions, jealously is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of our enemy; its wages to be sure of it.
There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.
Chance | Cruelty | God | Humanity | Justice | Mercy | Merit | Motives | Service | Will | Cruelty | Value | Victim |
Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman
Our responsibility is to allow our deepest drivers and talents to find expression through whatever form of service or career we choose, in the most positive, altruistic way we can.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
Human service is the highest form of self-interest for the person who serves.
Self | Self-interest | Service |
Frederick II, `Frederick the Great’ NULL
When I find any officer that answers me with firmness, intelligence, and clearness, I set him down in my list for making use of his service on proper occasions.
Firmness | Intelligence | Service |
Military service produces moral imbecility, ferocity and cowardice.
The only service a friend can render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Architecture paves the way, as it were, for the adequate realization of the God, toiling and wrestling in his service with external nature, and seeking to extricate it from the chaos of finitude, and the abortiveness of chance.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
A man’s real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag.
This is the spirit of our practice: love - not attachment, but something much deeper - infusing our awareness, enabling us to open to and accept the truth of each moment; and service that feels our intimate connectedness with all things and responds to the wholeness of life.
Awareness | Life | Life | Love | Practice | Service | Spirit | Truth | Wholeness |
The greatest service we can perform for others is to help them to help themselves.
Service |
Indira Gandhi, fully Indirā Priyadarśinī Gāndhī
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Service |