This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Six things are requisite to create a "happy home." Integrity must be the architect, and tidiness the upholsterer. It must be warmed by affection, lighted up with cheerfulness, and industry must be the ventilator, renewing the atmosphere and bringing in fresh salubrity day by day; while over all, as a protecting canopy and glory, nothing will suffice except the blessing of God.
Cheerfulness | Day | Glory | God | Happy | Industry | Integrity | Nothing | Tidiness | Will |
Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
An idiot can face a crisis - it's this day to day living that wears you out.
Elderly Men... have lived many years; they have often been taken in, and often made mistakes; and life on the whole is a bad business. The result is that they are sure about nothing and under-do everything. They ‘think,’ but they never ‘know’; and because of their hesitation they always add a ‘possibly’ or a ‘perhaps’, putting everything this way and nothing positively. They are cynical; that is, they tend to put the worse construction on everything. Further, their experience makes them distrustful and therefor suspicious of evil. Consequently they neither love warmly nor hate bitterly, but... love as though they will some day hate and hate as though they will some day love. They are small-minded, because they have been humbled by life: their desires are set upon nothing more exalted or unusual than what will help them to keep alive... They live by memory rather than by hope; for what is left to them of life is but little as compared with the long past; and hope is of the future, memory of the past... Old men may feel pity, as well as young men, but not for the same reason. Young men feel it out of kindness; old men out of weakness, imagining that anything that befalls anyone else might easily happen to them.
Business | Day | Evil | Experience | Future | Hate | Hope | Kindness | Life | Life | Little | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Pity | Reason | Weakness | Will | Old |
Desire not to change a man into something other than he is. For it is certain that good reasons, against which you can do nothing, constrain him to be thus and not otherwise. But you can impart a change to that which is already; for a man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you. And to limn its outline, so that it is evident to all, and to the man himself. Then, once he perceives it, he will accept it (having readily enough accepted it the day before) even though he has no special ardor to second him therein. And likewise once, by dint of having fixed his attention on it, it has been integrated within him, and indeed become a second nature, it will live the life of all things which seek to perpetuate and augment themselves.
Attention | Change | Day | Desire | Enough | Good | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |
Thus with love. They err who think that they have but to learn about love, if they are to come by it. And that man hoodwinks himself who drifts through life hoping to be vanquished by love, learning by fitful fevers to enjoy brief stirrings of the heart, ever thinking to encounter that supreme fever which will enkindle his whole life; though, by reason of his pettiness of mind and the insignificance of the hill he has climbed, it can be but a short-lived exaltation of his heart. Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb... For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance.
Day | Heart | Insignificance | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mind | Reason | Thinking | Will | Child | Learn | Think |
Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Man has been endowed with reason and creative powers to increase what has been given him, but so far he has not created but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, the rivers are drying up, the game birds are becoming extinct, the climate is ruined, and every day the earth is becoming poorer and more hideous.
Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |
Reverence is one of the signs of strength; irreverence one of the surest indications of weakness. No man will rise high who jeers at sacred things. The fine loyalties of life must be reverenced or they will be forsworn in the day of trial.
Day | Life | Life | Man | Reverence | Sacred | Strength | Weakness | Will |
Live every day as if it were your last. Treat everybody else as if he were you.
Day |
Most people have the idea that happiness is something that can be manufactured. They do not realize that it can no more be manufactured than wheat or corn can be manufactured. It must grow; and the harvest will be like the seed. It will take every moment that we have lived of life's probation day to think on the true, honest, just, pure and lovely things of life. These are the things that will make us contented.
If you begin the day with love in your heart, peace in your nerves, and truth in your mind, you not only benefit by their presence but also bring them to others, to your family and friends, and to all those whose destiny draws across your path that day.
Day | Destiny | Family | Heart | Love | Mind | Peace | Truth |
Each evening we should meditate upon the fact that one more day is gone from the list that make up the sum of our years...By so much the time is shortened that separates us from the grave, the judgment and the eternal destiny.
Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul. Take time to think, it is the source of power. Take time to play, it is the source of perpetual youth. Take time to read, it is the fountain of wisdom. Take time to pray, it is the greatest power on earth. Take time to love and be loved, it is a God-given privilege. Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness. Take time to give, it is too short a day to be selfish. Take time to work, it is the price of success.
Day | Earth | God | Love | Music | Play | Power | Price | Soul | Success | Time | Wisdom | Work | Youth |
In the day of prosperity there is a forgetfulness of affliction; and in the day of affliction there is no more remembrance of prosperity.
Affliction | Day | Forgetfulness | Prosperity |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.
Day | Future | Happy | Individual | Life | Life | Past | Will | World | Youth | Youth |