This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Do little things in an extraordinary way; be the best one in your line. You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that god's creative principle works in you. Never mind the past. Though your errors be as deep as the ocean, the soul itself cannot be swallowed up by them. Have the unflinching determination to move on your path unhampered by limiting thoughts of past errors.
Determination | God | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Past | Soul | Will | World |
We find great things are made of little things, and little things go lessening till at last comes God behind them.
Russell H. Conwell, fully Russell Herman Conwell
The power of little things to give instruction and happiness should be the first lesson in life, and it should be inculcated deeply.
Lesson | Life | Life | Little | Power | Instruction | Happiness |
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
Little |
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things.
Lew Welch, fully Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr.
Living is made up of these little things - a day to day business punctuated with things seen, seen best when we weren't looking for them, or things that just happened to us while we were walking "dully along" and that we ought to notice these things. It is very easy to bandage the eyes and tell everyone that life is dull. But I am called odd by these people because I really don't think so. I try to make the day have a THING in it, and it usually does whether I try or not. And that makes the day. Period. But I am purposeless. I am talking of this far too seriously, but it rather hurts when I think that I was once very vulnerable to the charges that come my way. I have tried so damned hard to put a thing as simply as it appeared to me, and tried too damned hard not to let myself blow up a simple happening into a symbol of unrequited love but to leave it as it is. Shit.
Business | Day | Life | Life | Little | Love | People | Talking | Business | Think |
Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.
Little |
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
God made the world for the delight of human beings-- if we could see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we've waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us -- you just can't resist Him. I believe there's no such thing as luck in life, it's God's love, it's His.
Awareness | Little | Love | Luck | World | Luck | Awareness |
Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
You can do that much better than me if you eliminate the parasitic movements that you enact because you want to succeed. Make your own mistakes and keep on doing it and pay attention to the little things you become aware of.
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
There are experts in little things but there are no experts in big things. There are experts in this fact and that fact but there are no moral experts.
Little |
Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you Who only has at heart your getting lost, May seem as if it should have been a quarry— Great monolithic knees the former town Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered. And there’s a story in a book about it: Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest, The chisel work of an enormous Glacier That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole. You must not mind a certain coolness from him Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain. Nor need you mind the serial ordeal Of being watched from forty cellar holes As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins. As for the woods’ excitement over you That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves, Charge that to upstart inexperience. Where were they all not twenty years ago? They think too much of having shaded out A few old pecker-fretted apple trees. Make yourself up a cheering song of how Someone’s road home from work this once was, Who may be just ahead of you on foot Or creaking with a buggy load of grain. The height of the adventure is the height Of country where two village cultures faded Into each other. Both of them are lost. And if you’re lost enough to find yourself By now, pull in your ladder road behind you And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me. Then make yourself at home. The only field Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall. First there’s the children’s house of make-believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad. Then for the house that is no more a house, But only a belilaced cellar hole, Now slowly closing like a dent in dough. This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. Your destination and your destiny’s A brook that was the water of the house, Cold as a spring as yet so near its source, Too lofty and original to rage. (We know the valley streams that when aroused Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.) I have kept hidden in the instep arch Of an old cedar at the waterside A broken drinking goblet like the Grail Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it, So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t. (I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.) Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
Adventure | Enough | Excitement | Heart | Light | Little | Mind | Need | Story | Time | Work | Wrong | Old | Think |
James Ridley, fully James Kenneth Ridley, wrote under pen name Sir Charles Morell
Think not, Sultan, that in the sequestered vale alone dwells virtue, and her sweet companion, with attentive eye, mild, affable benevolence! No, the first great gift we can bestow on others is a good example.
Art | Feelings | Little | Nothing | Promise | Society | Will | Society | Art |
High noon behind the tamarisks, the sun is hot above us-- As at home the Christmas Day is breaking wan, They will drink our healths at dinner, those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone!
Little |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. In the same manner present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages. Life, however short, is made shorter by waste of time.