This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.
Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun
The ability to make love frivolously is the thing which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.
Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun
The average child is an almost non-existent myth. To be normal one must be peculiar in some way or another.
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
I had the opportunity to deliver babies... In each of these numinous moments, I knew that life had meaning; each experience was accompanied by an upwelling of gratitude and humility. These moments, which can be called an experience of the self, or archetype of meaning, are akin to the act of finally seeing the Holy Grail after a long quest... It is through these moments of grace and gratitude that we acquire a sense of meaning and a desire to live a meaningful life. The personal challenge is now.
Challenge | Character | Desire | Experience | Grace | Gratitude | Humility | Life | Life | Meaning | Opportunity | Self | Sense |
The highest level of compassion is without any purpose or intent. It seeks neither the good of others nor its own good. It lies in being good not ‘doing good.’ There is simply living without design or conscious reflection. It embodies the fostering of love.
Character | Compassion | Design | Good | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Reflection |
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.
Age | Change | Character | Error | Labor | Life | Life | Youth |
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.
Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |
If one wishes to be esteemed, one must live with estimable people.
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.
Character | Cunning | Discretion | Good | Instinct | Life | Life | Looks | Men | Perfection | Reason | Sense | Understanding |
Happiness follows sorrow, sorrow follows happiness, but when one no longer discriminates between happiness and sorrow, a good deed and a bad deed, one is able to realize freedom.
Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
You must learn to know others in order to know yourself.