This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bear well in mind that your whole past was but a birth and a becoming.
Intellectual virtues owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit... From this fact it is plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature.
Birth | Experience | Growth | Habit | Nature | Nothing | Reason | Time | Virtue | Virtue |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The aim, and test, of progress under a truly Christian dispensation on Earth would not lie in the field of mundane social life; the field would be the spiritual life of individual souls in their passage through this earthly life from birth into this world to death out of it.
Birth | Death | Earth | Individual | Life | Life | Progress | World |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
For that which is born death is certain, and for the dead birth is certain. Therefore grieve not over that which is unavoidable.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life, is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle. It is by what we do ourselves that we learn.
Birth | Cause | Children | Death | Effort | Experience | Force | Life | Life | Mistake | Success | Learn |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
For that which is born, death is certain; and for the dead, birth is certain. Therefore, grieve not over that which is unavoidable.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
For certain is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.
Birth | Death | Inevitable |
Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman
This metaphor of a mountain path allows us to reconcile an ancient paradox about whether we truly have free will or whether our life is somehow predestined. At the moment of birth we are each given a specific inner mountain to climb, reflecting the force of predestination. How we climb and the time we take are up to us, reflecting the power of free will. In other words, we're given the playing field, but we choose how to play the game. We always have the power of choice, discipline, responsibility and commitment. No life path is harder or easier, better or worse, than any other, except to the degree we make it so.
Better | Birth | Choice | Commitment | Discipline | Force | Free will | Life | Life | Paradox | Play | Power | Predestination | Responsibility | Time | Will | Words |
In the human heart there is a ceaseless birth of passions, so that the destruction of one is almost always the establishment of another.
Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth that in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?
Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition.
Better | Birth | Children | Conquest | Death | Loneliness | Marriage | Men | Sacrifice | Terror | Waiting | War | Understand |
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
Periods of confused anarchy… seem always destined to precede the birth of every new society.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination.
Birth | Imagination | Marriage | Men | Nature | Soul | Intellect |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination.
Birth | Imagination | Marriage | Nature | Soul | Intellect |