This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Life is not the creature of circumstance. Indeed, in the whole universe of everything that is, life alone, life by its very nature, is the antagonist of circumstance... If there is any one thing that is utterly clear about the nature of life, it is that it was meant to master circumstance. The spirit conquers all things when the spirit wills it, and no excuse remains when we fail to live as we wish.
Character | Life | Life | Nature | Spirit | Universe | Wills |
Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.
Character | Experience | Failure | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Unique | Happiness |
We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present; not only so, but, moreover, there is no moment at all, that is; no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards.
Character | Energy | Force | Future | Hope | Man | Present | Will |
The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.
Character | Impartiality | Soul | Will |
When a person feels sad because someone did not show him respect or give him approval, he can say to himself, “What will I really gain if this person does show me respect or does approve of me? What do I really lose by his insulting me?” The answer is: Nothing! Both honor and humiliation are very temporary states, and rarely make practical differences in our lives. So why upset yourself because someone failed to honor you? If a person will internalize the truth of this concept, he will never feel sad about lack of honor or approval.
Character | Honor | Nothing | Respect | Truth | Will | Respect |
At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus rise and increase.
Character | Important | Men | Morality | Success | Will | World |
The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.
Ability | Character | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Right | Wisdom |
Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings; but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us - the ties that have made others depend on us - and would cut them in two.
The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity.
Character | Chastity | Courage | Generosity | Important | Influence | Isolation | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Reverence | Rule | Sense | Silence | Soul | Child |
Envy comes from focusing on the few moments of good fortune in the life of another person, while ignoring his years of misfortune.
Character | Envy | Fortune | Good | Life | Life | Misfortune |