This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow - is the true love of men.
There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow - the alter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
We would not be human if we did not miss loved ones; but in feeling lonesome for them we don’t want selfish attachment to be the cause of keeping them earthbound. Extreme sorrow prevents a departed soul from going ahead toward greater peace and freedom.
Men can endure to hear otheres praised only so long as they can… persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.
Ability | Envy | Incredulity | Men |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history, when, on the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long periods of time intercepting their view, and, on the other hand, the contemporary records of any actions and lives, partly through envy and ill-will, partly through favor and flattery, pervert and distort truth.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Better | Education | Envy | Good | Ignorance | Imitation | Man | Nature | Power | Suicide | Time | Universe |
The classes of citizens are three. The rich are useless, always lusting after more. Those who have not, and live in want, are a menace, ridden with envy and fooled by demagogues; their malice stings the owners. Of the three, the middle part saves cities: it guards the order a community establishes.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of bones.
Envy | Man | Murder | Revenge | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Murder |
In the life to be, there is neither envy nor hatred, nor contention, but the righteous rejoice in the light of God’s countenance.
The vice of envy is… always a confession of inferiority.
Envy | Inferiority | Vice |
Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities owe possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.
Affectation | Appearance | Distinction | Envy | Folly | Infamy | Passion | Pride | Qualities | Superiority | Think | Vice |
To be an object of hatred and aversion to their contemporaries has been the usual fate of all those whose merit has raised them above the common level. The man who submits to the shafts of envy for the sake of noble objects pursues a judicious course for his own lasting fame. Hatred dies with its object, while merit soon breaks forth in full splendor, and his glory is handed down to posterity in never-dying strains.
Envy | Fame | Fate | Glory | Man | Merit | Object | Posterity | Fate |
Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds,. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.
Take pleasure in what you have and you never have to envy anyone else. The best anyone can obtain from their possessions, experiences, accomplishments, skills or fame is happiness. If you have happiness from what you do and have, no one can really gain anything more than what you already have.
Envy | Fame | Pleasure | Possessions | Happiness |