This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better.
Better | Expectation | Life | Life | People | Work | Expectation |
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit.
Expectation | Good | Expectation |
Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |
Confrontation with expectation is manipulation. We must share, we must speak our truth, but not simply to get the reaction we want.
Expectation | Truth | Expectation |
Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with expectation of good.
Expectation | Good | Hope | Life | Life | Expectation |
Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work diligently while the day lasts. The best preparation for death is life.
Day | Death | Expectation | Life | Life | Work | Expectation |
If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual existence of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
Change | Existence | Expectation | God | Men | Necessity | Nothing | Power | Silence | Sound | Wonder | Expectation |
If spring came but once in a century instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change.
Change | Expectation | Silence | Sound | Wonder | Expectation |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor... To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
Ability | Contemplation | Dawn | Day | Expectation | Life | Life | Man | Contemplation | Expectation | Learn |
If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
Change | Expectation | God | Men | Necessity | Nothing | Power | Silence | Sound | Wonder | Expectation |
[Paraphrase] The professional artist is morally suspect, even socially dangerous, conman, who from a deliberately chosen position of spiritual alienation, yet offers the ambiguous, self-serving products of his art, in expectation not only of support and remuneration, but also of social approval and even adoration as genius.
Alienation | Art | Expectation | Genius | Position | Remuneration | Self | Approval | Expectation |
Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.
Expectation | Laughter | Nothing | Expectation |
Property is nothing but a basis of expectation; the expectation of deriving certain advantages from a thing which we said to possess, in consequence of the relation in which we stand towards it. There is no image, no painting, no visible trait, which can express the relation that constitutes property. It is not material, it is metaphysical; it is a mere conception of the mind.
Expectation | Mind | Nothing | Property | Expectation |
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death! Without this radiant idea - this delightful morning star, indicting that the luminary of eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. The expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die; thanks to that gospel which opens the vision of an endless life; and thanks above all to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct the faithful through the sacred trance of death, into scenes of Paradise and everlasting delight.
Conduct | Death | Despair | Eternity | Expectation | Friend | Life | Life | Melancholy | Paradise | Sacred | Vision | Expectation |
Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources.
Ability | Alchemy | Body | Compassion | Decision | Disease | Expectation | Heart | Hope | Humility | Patience | People | Practice | Qualities | Relationship | Risk | Time | Trust | Expectation |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
We never live, but we are always in the expectation of living.
Go without expectation, for expectation can become a rut that will keep you from your real path of learning.
Expectation | Learning | Will | Expectation |
Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat
If man can, with almost complete assurance, predict phenomena when he knows their laws, and if, even when he does not, he can still, with great expectation of success, forecast the future on the basis of his experience of the past, why, then, should it be regarded as a fantastic undertaking to sketch, with some pretense to truth, the future destiny of man on the basis of his history?
Destiny | Expectation | Experience | Future | History | Man | Past | Phenomena | Success | Truth | Expectation |
Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty. But the man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against the present's afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages. What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon.
Comfort | Difficulty | Expectation | Future | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Past | Present | Wise | Expectation | Happiness |