This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
One should conquer the world, not to enthrone a man, but an idea; for ideas exist forever.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
The abstinent run away from what they desire but carry their desires with them.
Desire |
We desire the truth, but find within ourselves nothing but uncertainty. We seek happiness, but find mainly misery. We are incapable of suppressing the desire for truth and happiness, and yet are incapable of knowing truth and happiness. These frustrated desires remind us how far we have fallen from our true state.
Desire | Knowing | Nothing | Truth | Uncertainty |
We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The skeptics who desire truth alone labor in vain.
Desire | Heart | Labor | Nothing | Principles | Reason | Truth |
The wisdom of God says, “I alone can make you understand who you are.” God has willed to make Himself quite recognizable to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from Him with all their heart. There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.
Desire | Enough | God | Heart | Light | Obscurity | Obscurity | Wisdom | God | Understand |
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
Desire | Loneliness | Love | Means | Men |
We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death.
Death | Desire | Truth | Uncertainty |
Life is so mysterious. People are in misery, and they don’t know how to get out, get help or free themselves. Life is total freedom, but we’re trapped in our own civilization, culture, religion, teachings. We’re equipped with fear, ignorance, unhappiness. Desire is the big evil, the big temptation. Many people carry on in life without knowing this. We do so much for our bodies but not for our souls. Pay attention to yourself, monitor your thinking and capture the villains within. Know what it is in you that would make people suffer more, make people suffer less. Know this and you know how to use your thinking and abilities to bring peace. Certain people have certain duties, a talent. The meaning of life is to see this mission, fulfill it and make the maximum use of your life and your benefit and mankind’s.
Attention | Civilization | Culture | Desire | Evil | Fear | Freedom | Ignorance | Knowing | Life | Life | Mankind | Meaning | Mission | Peace | People | Religion | Temptation | Thinking | Unhappiness |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
Desire | Progress | Reform | Society | World | Society | Understand |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
Water flows continually in the ocean but the ocean is never disturbed: desire flows into the mind of the seer but he is never disturbed. The seer knows peace: the man who stirs up his own lusts can never know peace. He knows peace who has forgotten desire. He lives without craving: free from ego, free from pride.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The State is a collection of officials… drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and of the power of the bureaucrats.
The consideration of the small addition often made by wealth to the happiness of the possessor may check the desire and prevent the insatiability which sometimes attends it... Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.
Consideration | Desire | Power | Respect | Wealth | Will | Respect | Happiness |
When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.
Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other; it warns us with a voice tht even the sagest discredit too long, and the silliest believe too late. Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it; he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.
Ambition | Desire | Dread | Enemy | Fear | Friend | Grave | Hope | Little | Opportunity | Repentance | Time | Will | Wisdom | Wise |
A real teacher can never run dry because he continually learns from each and every experience, not filled with likes and dislikes, bur desire through learning to evolute whatever he touches. A correct teacher of Yoga is not one who discusses it, but who is it.
Desire | Experience | Learning | Teacher |
I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great , rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little. A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for larger and finer growth.