This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
Have faith in your immortal nature. Know that you are Spirit. Those who think they are limited and mortal, that they are born and that they die, are superstitious. Anything that is weakening, anything that is degenerating, anything that tells us that we are limited human beings is a terrible superstition. By all the means in our power we must overcome it. Let us tear aside this veil of superstition, recognize our true nature, and know that we are eternal, imperishable and immortal.
Eternal | Faith | Means | Mortal | Nature | Power | Spirit | Superstition | Wisdom | Think |
Every person in the world may not become a personage. But every person may become a personality. The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Interesting thoughts can live only in cultivated minds. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.
Books | Cause | Conversation | Good | Happy | Leisure | Love | Means | Music | People | Personality | Wisdom | World | Happiness | Think |
That’s what education means - to be able to do what you’ve never done before.
Whatever life is (and nobody can define it) it is something forever changing shape, fleeting, escaping us into death. Life is indeed the only thing that can die, and it begins to die as soon as it is born, and never ceases dying. Each of us is constantly experiencing cellular death. For the renewal of our tissues means a corresponding death of them, so that death and rebirth become, biologically, right and left hand of the same thing. All growing is at the same time a dying away from that which lived yesterday.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
One finds in art the means whereby he may rejoice in his nature, another the means whereby he may temporarily overcome and escape from his nature. In accordance with these two needs, there are two kinds of art and artist.
He who is held in bondage by his senses can never enjoy even a dream of freedom. It is only by complete escape from them that we arrive at a state of freedom from fear.
Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Wisdom |
Man was born to be tested on this earth... If I am to live twenty more years, I will try to live enjoying each moment, instead of killing myself to get more... to be a man means to be responsible, to know when it is time to speak, to know what has to be said, to know when one must stay silent.
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.
Excellence | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Observation | Pleasure | Reward | Strength | Wisdom |
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.
Emotions | Organization | Soul | Taste | Wisdom |
José Enrique Rodó, fully José Enrique Rodó Piñeyro
Every society to which you remain bound robs you of a part of your essence, and replaces it with a speck of the gigantic personality which is its own.
Personality | Society | Wisdom | Society |
Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there.
Better | Choice | Means | Pleasure | Society | Wisdom | Society |