This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Frank Leahy, fully Francis William "Frank" Leahy
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Isaac Papo, aka "ha-Kosesh" or "The Saint"
By analyzing your worries, you will become aware that all worry is useless. Worries fall into two categories: worrying about the past and worrying about the future. As regards to the past, worry will not change the situation. You are compounding your suffering or loss by your present worrying. If you are worrying about something that might happen in the future, do what you can to protect yourself and prevent a loss. If there is nothing you can do, all your worrying will make no difference. So why waste your present moments worrying?
Change | Character | Future | Nothing | Past | Present | Suffering | Waste | Will | Worry | Loss |
Rabbi Eliezer ben Isaac Papo, aka "ha-Kosesh" or "The Saint"
A person once came into a room where a few people were sleeping. The sleepers were dreaming nightmares and cried in their sleep. The person who was awake did not join them in their crying for he realized it was merely a dream. Similarly, I realize this world is like a dream. People upset over worldly matters are as in the midst of a nightmare. I am awake and am cognizant of how illusory worldly suffering really is.
Reason itself... demands that we recognize the limited place of the virtues of cognition, inquiry, and the cerebral side of life. An adequate account of rationality must rightly stress its importance and primacy while recognizing that the intellectual virtues are only limited components of the good life.
Character | Good | Inquiry | Life | Life | Rationality | Reason |
If you feel envious of others, you will never enjoy life. You will always find someone else to envy regardless of what you yourself have. There will invariably be another person who is greater than you in either wisdom, wealth, or power. Unless you stop comparing yourself with others, your entire life will be full of needless pain and suffering.
Character | Envy | Life | Life | Pain | Power | Suffering | Wealth | Will | Wisdom |
Solitary we must be in life's great hours of moral decisions; solitary in pain and sorrow; solitary in old age and in our going forth at death. Fortunate the man who has learned what to do in solitude and brought himself to see what companionship he may discover in it, what fortitude, what content.
Age | Character | Death | Fortitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Pain | Solitude | Sorrow | Companionship | Old |
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.
Character | Conscience | Deeds | Good | Heart | Pain | Deeds |
The life of a person who demands and pursues approval is full of pain and suffering. Even if he does receive a large amount of approval, he will still demand more. We can say with certainty that not everyone will honor him as much as he would like and he will cause himself much self-imposed misery.
Cause | Character | Honor | Life | Life | Pain | Receive | Self | Suffering | Will | Approval |