This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
Body | Children | Little | Music | Woman | Learn | Think | Understand |
You are Great, Little Man, when you are not small and petty. You are great when you carry on your trade lovingly, when you enjoy carving and building and painting and decorating and sowing, when you enjoy the blue sky and the deer and the dew and music and dancing, your growing children and the beautiful body of your woman or your man, when you learn to understand and think about life.
Wilfred Trotter, fully Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter
The various systems of doctrine that have held dominion over man have been demonstrated to be true beyond all question by rationalists of such power—to name only a few—as Aquinas and Calvin and Hegel and Marx. Guided by these master hands the intellect has shown itself more deadly than cholera or bubonic plague and far more cruel. The incompatibility with one another of all the great systems of doctrine might surely be have expected to provoke some curiosity about their nature.
Ideas | Mercy | Mind | Usefulness | Will |
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
The span of years has not much altered my fundamental views of mass amusement. Experience has merely perfected the style and method and the techniques of presentation. My entertainment credo has not changed a whit. Strong combat and soft satire are in our story cores. Virtue triumphs over wickedness in our fables. Tyrannical bullies are routed or conquered by our good little people, human or animal. Basic morality is always deeply implicit in our screen legends. But they are never sappy or namby-pamby. And they never prate or preach. All are pitched toward the happy and satisfactory ending. There is no cynicism in me and there is none allowed in our work.
Walt Kelley, fully Walter Crawford "Walt" Kelly, Jr.
Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
Courage | Desire | Gentleness | Need | Will |
Twenty years hence my eyes may grow if not quite dim, yet rather so, still yours from others they shall know twenty years hence. Twenty years hence though it may hap that I be called to take a nap in a cool cell where thunderclap was never heard. there breathe but o'er my arch of grass a not too sadly sighed alas, and I shall catch, ere you can pass, that winged word.
I feel I am growing old for want of somebody to tell me that I am looking as young as ever. Charming falsehood! There is a vast deal of vital air loving words.
Against the groaning mast I stand, the Atlantic surges swell, to bear me from my native land and Zo?'s wild farewell. From billow upon billow hurl'd I can yet hear her say, `And is there nothing in the world worth one short hour's delay?' `Alas, my Zo?! were it thus, I should not sail alone, nor seas nor fates had parted us, but are you all my own?' Thus were it, never would burst forth my sighs, Heaven knows how true! But, though to me of little worth, the world is much to you. `Yes,' you shall say, when once the dream (So hard to break!) is o'er, `My love was very dear to him, my fame and peace were more.'
Custom |
Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an
We know that the extension of knowledge has to consist in action, and it is clear that without action there can be no extension of knowledge. Does not the state of the unity of knowledge and action stand sharply in focus? . . . Whenever the superior man is engaged in practical affairs or discussion, he insists on the task of knowledge and action combined. The aim is precisely to extend the liangzhi of his original mind. He is unlike those who devote themselves to merely talking and hearing as though that were knowledge, and divide knowledge and action into two separate things as though they really could be itemized and take place one after the other.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
An irresistible footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities - at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Over the years, our current businesses, in aggregate, should deliver modest growth in operating earnings. But they will not in themselves produce truly satisfactory gains. We will need major acquisitions to get that job done.
Vice |
The grate had been removed from the wide overwhelming fireplace, to make way for a fire of wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log glowing and blazing, and sending forth a vast volume of light and heat; this I understood was the Yule-log, which the Squire was particular in having brought in and illumined according to ancient custom.
Appearance | Good | Light | Little |
In the castle of Koraida was found a great quantity of pikes, lances, cuirasses, and other armor; and its lands were covered with flocks and herds and camels. In dividing the spoil each foot-soldier had one lot, each horseman three; two for his horse, and one for himself. A fifth part of the whole was set apart for the prophet. The most precious prize in the eyes of Mahomet was Rihana, daughter of Simeon, a wealthy and powerful Jew; and the most beautiful female of her tribe. He took her to himself, and, having converted her to the faith, added her to the number of his wives. But, though thus susceptible of the charms of the Israelitish women, Mahomet became more and more vindictive in his hatred of the men; no longer putting faith in their covenants, and suspecting them of the most insidious attempts upon his life.
How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.
Good | Humor | Laughter | Companionship |
If we believe that this particular pain is the one that will push the baby out of the womb and into our arms, we somehow try to make a place for that pain in our heart. Pain is still there: excruciating, terrible pain. But at the moment of birth, we rarely feel betrayal or rage; we somehow feel that this is simply pain that has come with life.
People | Perception | Rest | Sabbath | Time | Wisdom | Work |
Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
Affective fixation on the personality of a master, teacher, guru, is a serious obstacle to 'liberation': the person of the liberator becomes the gaoler... The Chinese Masters told their monks to kill the Buddha if by chance they met him.
Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Contexts become wrong by being too small - too small, that is, to contain the scientist or the farmer or the farm family or the local ecosystem or the local community - and this is crucial.
As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them.
Day | Family | Fulfillment | Giving | Love | Man | Means | Men | Reason | Work | Learn |