This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The fruit of desire is poverty.
Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong
Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny. Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations? Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenge is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space lead us to hope that this strength can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems.
Challenge | Democracy | Desire | Destiny | Hope | Little | Man | Mystery | Order | Problems | Science | Space | Strength | Universe | Will | Wonder | Understand |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
The paradox of rising expectations suggests that improving the quality of life might be an insurmountable task. In fact, there is not inherent problem in our desire to escalate our goals, as long as we enjoy the struggle along the way. The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present. When that happens, they forfeit their chance of contentment.
Chance | Contentment | Desire | Goals | Life | Life | Paradox | People | Pleasure | Present | Struggle |
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything
Achievement | Desire | Hope |
I take him to be the only rich man that lives upon what he has, owes nothing, and is contented; for there is no determinate sum of money, nor quantity of estate that can denote a man rich, since no man is truly rich that has not so much as perfectly satiates his desire for having more; for the desire of more is want, and want is poverty.
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Faith as the state of being ultimately concerned implies love, namely, the desire and urge toward the reunion of the separated.
Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
To wish is of little account; to succeed you must earnestly desire; and this desire must shorten thy sleep.
The irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred - that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love.
Beauty | Desire | Enjoyment | Force | Love | Opinion | Passion | Right |
Seeing that all men desire happiness, and happiness, as has been shown, is gained by a use, and a right use, of the things of life, and the right use of them, and good fortune in the use of them, is given by knowledge, the inference is that everybody ought by all means to try and make himself as wise as he can.
Desire | Fortune | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Means | Men | Right | Wise |
Our relentless desire for things ultimately devours the land while silencing stories that may be important for us to hear. In losing our connection to the land, we also lose an important source of information about how we might live differently. We are left with fewer and fewer sources of meaning for ourselves.
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
Jealousy is a species of fear which is related to the desire we have to preserve to ourselves the possession of some thing.
The desire to repel harmful things and to revenge oneself, is the most persistent of all desires.
The passion of desire is an agitation of the soul caused by the spirits which dispose it to wish for the future the things which it represents to itself as agreeable. Thus we do not only desire the presence of the absent good, but also the conservation of the present, and further, the absence of evil, both of that which we already have, and of that which we believe we might experience in time to come.
Absence | Agitation | Conservation | Desire | Evil | Experience | Future | Good | Passion | Present | Soul | Time |