This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Happiness does not come from possessions, but from our appreciation of them. It does not come from our work, but from our attitude toward that work. It does not come from success, but from the spiritual growth we attain in achieving that success.
Appreciation | Growth | Possessions | Success | Work | Appreciation |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The regular social progress though which a growing society advances from one stage in its growth to another is a compound movement in which a creative individual or minority first withdraws from the common life of the society, then works out, in seclusion, a solution for some problem with which the society as a whole is confronted, and finally re-enters into communion with the rest of society in order to help it forward on its road by imparting to it the results of the creative work which the temporarily secluded individual or minority has accomplished during the interval between withdrawal and return.
Growth | Individual | Life | Life | Order | Progress | Rest | Seclusion | Society | Work | Society |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Almost all education has a political motive: It aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is the motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.
Aims | Competition | Education | Growth | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mind | Spirit |
Change is inevitable but perpetual growth is a choice.
Change | Choice | Growth | Inevitable |
Conflicts bring experience; and experience brings that growth in grace which is not to be attained by any other means.
Experience | Grace | Growth | Means |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
If you don’t know how to serve men, why worry about serving the gods?
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
If we can't have all we want, let us not poison our days with worry and resentment. Let us be good to ourselves. Let us be philosophical. And philosophy, according to Epictecal, boils down to this: "The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things."
Good | Little | Man | Philosophy | Resentment | Worry | Happiness |
The justest division of human learning is that derived from the three different faculties of the soul, the seat of learning; history being relative to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason.
History | Imagination | Learning | Memory | Philosophy | Poetry | Reason | Soul |
The growth of bureaucracy is largely self-engendered, in the sense that only a small part of it derides from the real requirements of the function to be served, the greater part being the product of tendencies and pressures arising within the bureaucratic process.
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do; dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay or growth of it. If with thy watch that too be down, then wind up both. Since thou shalt be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
True friendship is a slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
Adversity | Growth | Friendship |
Intuition represents the free life of the mind, the poetry native to it, which I am far from despising; but this is the subjective or ideal element in thought which we must discount if we are anxious to possess true knowledge.
Intuition | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mind | Poetry | Thought | Thought |