This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
No one wants advice - only corroboration.
There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.
Discretion | Impertinence | Learning | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Mind | Pedantry | Perfection | Prejudice | Qualities | Rest | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Weakness | Will | Wit | Work | World | Talent | Value |
Ethical subjectivism absolves people of ever having to deliberate before making a moral judgment, whereas cultural relativism absolves people from moral responsibility so long as they follow the crowd. At the same time, almost everyone wants others to treat them with respect and be held morally culpable for their hurtful actions.
Judgment | People | Respect | Responsibility | Time | Wants | Respect |
The divorce of the practical and relative world of daily living from the astronomical sense of the high religions is surely one of the ultimate causes of the breakdown that has been going on so fast in our own generation.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Those who desire to be men in truth, not brutes in the appearance of men, must constantly endeavor to reduce the wants of the body.
The male form of a female liberationist is a male liberationist - a man who realizes the unfairness of having to work all his life to support a wife and children so that someday his widow may live in comfort, a man who points out that commuting to a job he doesn’t like is just as oppressive as his wife’s imprisonment in a suburb, a man who rejects his exclusion, by society and most women, from participation in childbirth and the engrossing, delightful care of young children - a man, in fact, who wants to relate himself to people and the world around him.
Care | Children | Comfort | Life | Life | Man | People | Society | Unfairness | Wants | Wife | Work | World | Society |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
I do not understand what the man who is happy wants in order to be happier.
Happy | Man | Order | Wants | Understand |
Margaret Atwood, fully Margaret Eleanor Atwood
A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there’s less of you.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
But repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They become rigid and defensive, and their self stops growing. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed, and still kept within the bounds of reason. If a person learns to control his instinctual desires, not because he has to, but because he wants to, he can enjoy himself without becoming addicted.
Control | Discipline | Fear | Life | Life | Necessity | People | Reason | Self | Virtue | Virtue | Wants |
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don't keep it a secret.
Wants |
Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater things than we realize. How much one actually achieves depends largely on: 1. Desire. 2. Faith. 3. Persistent Effort. 4. Ability. But if you are lacking the first three factors, your ability will not balance out the lack. So concentrate on the first three and the results will amaze you.
Ability | Balance | Desire | Effort | Faith | Mind | Wants | Will |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
It is important to differentiate between your needs and your wants. Your needs are few, while your wants can be limitless. In order to find freedom and Bliss, minister only to your needs. Stop creating limitless wants and pursuing the will-o’-the-wisp of false happiness.
The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.
Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano
The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, 'Not yet,' and thus denies us. The future is not the time of love: what person truly wants they want now. Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present.
Future | Love | Present | Prison | Time | Wants | Happiness | Value |