This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
The attachment is the killer, not the desire. You can desire something and, when you're through with it, detach yourself from it, and it doesn't hurt. It's the attachment that hurts.
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
Consumption, celebrity and the quest for perfection in this world are all subject to the law of diminishing returns: each successive acquisition and achievement will mean less than the one before. Diminishing returns are finally leading to diminished expectations about the promise of finding happiness without caring for our souls. Perhaps we are now ready to reject the hucksters of materialisms that have lured us down so many dead ends, and start again on the road that will lead us back to God.
Achievement | Character | Ends | God | Law | Perfection | Promise | Will | World | Happiness |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
Each is driven by the most relentless, persistent instinct man possesses: the instinct for meaning, transcendence, wholeness and truth... Reality is a continuum that extends from thinking to the denser world of physical form.
Character | Instinct | Man | Meaning | Reality | Thinking | Truth | Wholeness | World |
A large amount of physical pain and suffering is caused by one’s thoughts and behaviors. The desire for food causes people to overeat and consume food that is harmful to their health. Envy, anger, and honor-seeking lead to diseases of the heart, high blood pressure, nervous tension and excessive stress. Moreover, even when you pain is basically caused by physical symptoms, your mental attitude towards the pain can greatly increase or decrease the actual amount of suffering you experience. The pain you suffer from illnesses and injuries is frequently more psychological than physical. A person who learns to master a calm and serene attitude towards life trains himself to tolerate physical pain and the actual suffering is greatly lessened.
Anger | Character | Desire | Envy | Experience | Health | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Pain | People | Suffering |
We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portion of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos! My world is but one in a million alike embedded, alike real to those who may abstract them.
Abstract | Character | Choice | Science | Space | Will | World |
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war, we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.
Age | Character | Obligation | Peace | Restraint | Strength | War |
There’ll be no night in Heav’n, In that blest world above; No anxious toil, no weary hours; For labor there is love. There’ll be no sorrow there, There’ll be no sorrow there, In Heav’n above, where all is love, There’ll be no sorrow there. There’ll be no grief in Heav’n, For life is one glad day, And tears are those of former things Which all have passed way. There’ll be no sin in Heav’n; Behold that blessèd throng, All holy in their spotless robes, All holy in their song.
Action | Character | Conduct | Devotion | Faith | Good | Grief | Labor | Life | Life | Love | Sin | Sorrow | Suffering | Tears | Work | World | Blessed |
Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL
If I do not feel a sense of joy in God’s creation, if I forget to offer the world back to God with thankfulness, I have advanced very little upon the Way. I have not yet learned to be truly human. For it is only through thanksgiving that I can become myself.
Character | God | Joy | Little | Sense | Thankfulness | World | God |
Many people are mistaken about how they can improve their situation. They think they will have peace of mind only when they have obtained everything they desire. But this is erroneous. Gratifying desires does not bring lasting satisfaction. The only path to achieve satisfaction is to stop desiring more things. As long as a person is unable to control his desiring, his problems will not be overcome... The only way to find real satisfaction in life is to stop desiring what is beyond your reach.
Character | Control | Desire | Life | Life | Mind | Peace | People | Problems | Will | Think |
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
Humility collects the soul into a single point by the power of silence. A truly humble man has no desire to be known or admired by others, but wishes to plunge from himself into himself, to become nothing, as if he had never been born. When he is completely hidden to himself in himself, he is completely with God.
Character | Desire | God | Humility | Man | Nothing | Power | Silence | Soul | Wishes |
It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with “I,” “me,” “mine” that we can truly possess the world I which we live. Everything is ours, provided that we regard nothing as our property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else’s.
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
I look upon the world as my fatherland... I look upon true patriotism as the brotherhood of man and the service of all to all.
Brotherhood | Character | Man | Patriotism | Service | World |
The world is your problem and to comprehend it you must understand yourself... You exist only in relationship; otherwise you are not... Relationship is the mirror in which you can see yourself as you are... Preconception of what relationship should be... prevents the uncovering, the unfoldment of “what is.”
Character | Relationship | World | Understand |