This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To eternity itself there is no other handle than the present moment. Let any man examine his thoughts and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so. All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
Eternity | Future | Happy | Hope | Inevitable | Knowing | Light | Man | Mankind | Means | Object | Past | Present | Will | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more then they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
Paradise | People | Unhappiness | World | Happiness |
Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no: poverty and unhappiness are man's doing.
Man | Poverty | Unhappiness |
If our condition were truly happy, we should not need to divert ourselves from it. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room.
Cause | Death | Happy | Ignorance | Man | Men | Need | Order | Unhappiness | Think |
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker
There is not even a meaning to the word experience which would not presuppose the distinction between past and future.
Distinction | Experience | Future | Meaning | Past |
To have sinned means that you are convinced that, in some mysterious way, what you have done will bring misfortune on you in the future; that it has broken some mysterious law of harmony, and is a link in a chain of past and future discords.
Future | Harmony | Law | Means | Misfortune | Past | Will | Misfortune |
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post-mortems. And remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
The slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient if it produce amendment, and the greatest insufficient if it do not.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Study the past if you would divine the future.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
It is bootless to discuss accomplished facts, to protect against things past remedy, to find fault with things bygone.
Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
Every part of this country is sacred to my people... Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
Events | Fate | Life | Life | Past | People | Sacred | Fate |
To glorify the past and to condemn the present has always been the way of the scholar.
Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
Sorrow |