This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.
Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
Life and love are not essentially about “a few persons nearest us.” They are found in the spiritual nature that unites us, even if everything else separates us. Apart from this unity, we are still lonesome and alienated - we are merely lonesome together, alienated together.
Ron and Mary Hulnick, formally H. Ronald Hulnick and
Because I am the only person I will have a relationship with all of my life, I choose: To love myself the way I am now. To always acknowledge that I am enough just the way I am. To love, honor and cherish myself. To be my own best friend. To be the person I would like to spend the rest of my life with. To always take care of myself so that I can take care of others. To always grow, develop and share my love and life.
Care | Character | Enough | Friend | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Relationship | Rest | Will |
We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility.
We can only love what we know and we can never know completely what we do not love.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
The God-relationship determines what love is between man and man, then love is kept from pausing in any self-deception or illusion, while certainly the demand for self-abnegation and sacrifice is again made more infinite. The love which does not lead to God, the love which does not have this as its sole goal, to lead the lovers to love God, stops at the purely human judgment as to what love and what love’s sacrifice and submission are; it stops and thereby escapes the possibility of the last and most terrifying horror of the collision: that in the love relationship there are infinite differences in the idea of what love is.
Character | God | Illusion | Judgment | Love | Man | Relationship | Sacrifice | Self | Self-deception | Submission |
All relationship is based on the image that you have built around another and the other has built about you... What is relationship? If the image has come to an end, which is the content of consciousness that makes up your consciousness, when the various images you have about yourself, about everything, come to an end, then what is the relationship between you and her? Then is there an observer observing apart from the thing it has observed? Or is it a total movement of love in relationship? Are you getting it? So love is a movement in relationship in which the observer is not.
Character | Consciousness | Love | Relationship |
Both the saint and the scientist must possess the same qualities in order to attain their ideals. But these qualities are selfless devotion, a meticulous love of truth, infinite patience, thoroughness, and a depth of mind which does not resent criticism. Without these qualities neither of the two can reach his goal. It is my firm belief that the goal which both science and religion reach by different routes is one and the same.
Belief | Character | Criticism | Devotion | Ideals | Love | Mind | Order | Patience | Qualities | Religion | Science | Truth |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
One should not think slightly of the paradoxical; for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a love without feeling... The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.
Character | Love | Paradox | Passion | Thought | Think | Thought |
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley
Since human beings have a moral conscience, a spiritual self and a physical self, we can choose among various options. And we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We can put the common interests of humankind above the conflicts of ideological, racial, religious and national groups. We can bring together thought and feeling, politics and moral values, women and men, the underprivileged and the privileged.... The essence of life is to search for happiness. To realize this end, we must become one with the human family, one with the universe... We should live as if we were to die today. We should die as if we live forever.
Character | Conscience | Consequences | Family | Life | Life | Men | Politics | Search | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |
Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us, we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unity of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas and constantly changing scenes.
Adventure | Character | Enough | Ideas | Love | Man | Mediocrity | Men | Money | Power | Religion | Search | Unity | Will |
Who you do not love says nothing about the other person. It only defines the boundaries of your understanding.
Character | Love | Nothing | Understanding |
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
Your success and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents of life. The great enduring realities are love and service. Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. Resolve to keep happy and your joy in you shall form an invincible host against difficulty.
Character | Difficulty | Happy | Intelligence | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Service | Success | Happiness |