This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our life is not a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be opened… If we are preoccupied with what is missing and what is broken and wrong, we lose the miraculous harvest of all these tiny gifts, piled on upon the other, that accumulate without our acknowledging them. If we listen more carefully for the infinite blessings of a single day, this will not discount or obliterate our sorrows. But it will help us remember how strong and rich we can be, even in the midst of suffering.
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Our beliefs serve myriad purposes: They help us to organize the world in meaningful ways… They can also connect us with the transcendent dimensions of experience, and give us inspiration and hope, essential tools for confronting those moments of confusion and doubt that are so often part of life.
Doubt | Experience | Hope | Inspiration | Life | Life | World |
Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.
Wrong |
The measure of a man is not his strength; it is the depth of his nobility. The measure of any person is how he or she treats those who are less gifted, less intelligent, and less able. The measure of a Christian is how willing he or she is to reach down and help those who are less fortunate -- to take the strength and advantage they have to help those who have not.
An open mind should be more than a catch-all receptacle. It should have a screening mechanism to keep out the trivial, a sorting capacity to organize ideas and reconcile contradictions, and a critical tool to help us decide what we believe. That’s the difference between a mind that receives information and a mind that thinks.
A good man never dies - in worthy deed and prayer and helpful hands, and honest eyes, if smiles or tears be there; who lives for you and me - live for the world he tries to help - he lives eternally. A good man never dies. Who lives bravely take his share of toil and stress and, for his weaker fellows’ sake, makes every burden less - he may, at last, seem worn - lie fallen - hands and eyes folded - yet, though we mourn and mourn, a good man never dies.
If only man were worthy of help as God is able to provide it.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over which they have no control and for which they have no responsibility – for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.
Cause | Children | Control | Decision | Need | Parents | Responsibility |
The most elementary ethical principle, when understood by the heart, means that out of reverence for the unfathomable, infinite, and living Reality we call God, we must never consider ourselves strangers toward any human being. Rather, we must bind ourselves to the task of sharing his experiences and try being of help to him.
The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Prayer is not just the informing of God of our needs, for He already knows them. God does not show Himself equally to all creatures. This does not mean that he has favorites, that He decides to help some and to abandon others, but the difference occurs because it is impossible for Him to manifest Himself to certain hearts under the conditions they set up. The sunlight plays no favorites, but its reflection is very different on a lake and on a swamp.
God | Prayer | Reflection | God |
It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within.
Nothing |
Unknown Aboriginal Australian NULL
If you’re coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Blessings | Death | Earth | Grief | Heaven | Honor | Life | Life | Peace | Poverty | Wealth | Will |
There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself.
People |
Lazarus Long, fictional character created by Robert A. Heinlein
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin; the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
Crime | Death | Education | Money | Pity | Sin | Stupidity | Victim |
Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so we must see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
Brotherhood | Men | Mind | Need | Prejudice | Society | Understanding | Will | Society |
The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of other; it is in yourself alone.
Chance | Luck | Opportunity | Luck |