This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson
I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.
The key of the world is given into our hands when we throw ourselves unreservedly into the service of the highest truth we know.
We have mistaken our abstractions for concrete realities… The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter with its simple location in space and time, on the other hand mind, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact. Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists who accept matter and mind on an equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind into matter and those who put matter inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced concreteness to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century.
Mind | Philosophy | Space | Success | Suffering | Time | Yielding |
There’s a moral asymmetry that takes hold of us teachers rather too commonly – we think of ourselves as offering service to others, giving them our best, and forget what’s in it for ourselves, the service that we’re receiving from our students.
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour beforehand.
Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
Failure is not our only punishment for laziness: there is also the success of others.
Failure | Laziness | Punishment | Success |
He who would take good care of his health should be sparing in his tastes, banish his worries, temper his desires, restrain his emotions, take good care of his vital force, spare his words, regard lightly success and failure, ignore sorrows and difficulties, drive away foolish ambitions, avoid great likes and dislikes, calm his vision and his hearing, and be faithful in his internal regimen. How can one have sickness if he does not tire his spirits and worry his soul? Therefore he would nourish his nature should eat only when he is hungry and not fill himself with food, and he should drink only when he is thirsty and not fill himself with too much drink. He should eat little and between long intervals, and not too much and not too constantly. He should aim at being a little hungry when well-filled, and being a little well-filled when hungry. Being well-filled hurts the lungs and being hungry hurts the flow of vital energy.
Care | Emotions | Energy | Failure | Force | Good | Health | Little | Nature | Regard | Soul | Success | Temper | Vision | Words | Worry |
David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz
Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier – certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans.
Serving God is the way to gain knowledge of Him. God is the source of life, knowledge – everything – and gaining a close, intimate knowledge of God through our service to Him is the ultimate experience. He is the ultimate mystery – and the ultimate discovery.
Discovery | Experience | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mystery | Service | God |
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
Whosoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.