This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)
Ability | Cooperation | Energy | Evolution | Harmony |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.
Ability | Adversity | Challenge | Life | Life | Survival | Learn |
The yen to become wanderers among the stars involves more than the need to satisfy a cosmic curiosity. Basically, it flows out of an instinctive need to evolve. We belong to an unfinished species. We have limitless capacities for growth; indeed, our uniqueness lies in our ability to steer our own evolution. The destination becomes visible through an enlarged perspective. The greatest adventure within the reach of a sentient species is seeing itself in an expanding relationship.
Ability | Adventure | Curiosity | Evolution | Growth | Need | Relationship |
Men can endure to hear otheres praised only so long as they can… persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.
Ability | Envy | Incredulity | Men |
The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
Ability | Friendship |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
Our best hope, both of a tolerable political harmony and of an inner peace, rests upon our ability to observe the limits of human freedom even while we responsibly exploit its creative possibilities.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Wisdom consists in the ability to discriminate between the probable and improbable, and in being reconciled to the inevitable.
Ability | Inevitable | Wisdom |
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Ability | Confidence | Education | Self | Self-confidence | Temper |
Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources.
Ability | Alchemy | Body | Compassion | Decision | Disease | Expectation | Heart | Hope | Humility | Patience | People | Practice | Qualities | Relationship | Risk | Time | Trust | Expectation |
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Ability |
The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other.
Ability | Compassion | Love | Suffering | Understanding |
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a person's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that they learn thoroughly.
Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an
The sages do not consider that making no mistake is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of a person lies in their ability to correct their mistakes and continually to make a new person of themselves.
Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness: ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any.
Ability | Audacity | Courage | Cowardice | Moderation | Question | Moderation |
Regardless of how you have viewed events in the past, you have the ability to learn to view things with a calm and peaceful attitude. Instead of looking at events and situations as overwhelming, you can look at them as interesting and challenging experiences. Give up your demands of how you would have like anything to be and deal with what actually is.