This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What we gain without effort does not satisfy like what comes through the sweat of our brow or the work of self-transformation. No berries taste as sweet as those we pick. No insight changes us as deeply as what we discover ourselves. Prayer might help, but walking the endless path of practice is the only way to a deep reward. Sometimes just the path is reward enough.
Effort | Enough | Insight | Practice | Prayer | Reward | Self | Taste | Work |
Prayer should be regarded as practice of the Presence of God... Man prays not only that God should remember Him, but also that he should remember God... Prayer is an effort of man to reach God, to commune with an invisible being, creator of all things, supreme wisdom, truth, beauty, and strength, father and redeemer of each man.
Beauty | Effort | Father | God | Man | Practice | Prayer | Strength | Truth | Wisdom | God |
What roots are to a tree, belief is to the soul. Great oak trees have great roots. Great souls have great faith. However, the faith that holds has spiritual qualities. The stable man has that intangible confidence in himself with capacities to be and to do, a recognition of God who may transform and empower his life, and a determined effort to realize man's highest ideals.
Belief | Confidence | Effort | Faith | God | Ideals | Life | Life | Man | Qualities | Soul | God |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man - a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites - that it permits no concept of a benevolent coexistence among men - that it permits no concept of justice.
Altruism | Effort | Justice | Life | Life | Man | Means | Men | Sacrifice | Self | Selfishness |
If you identify the Absolute with God, that is not the God of religion. If again you separate them, God become s finite factor in the Whole. And the effort of religion is put an end to, and break down, this relation - a relation which, none the less, it essentially presupposes. Hence, short of the Absolute, God cannot rest, and having reached that goal, he is lost and religion with him.
Anything and everything in existence can be mastered when all effort is relaxed and the mind is absorbed in the infinite unbounded nature of consciousness. And then we are no longer upset by the play of opposites. And life is lived in freedom and joy.
Consciousness | Effort | Existence | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | Play |
Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman
Achievement flows from clear intent and focused effort over time. In order to achieve, we have to start where we are, find out what we need, have a plan and follow it through, persisting through difficulties and problems until we reach our goal.
Achievement | Effort | Need | Order | Plan | Problems | Time |
Don Marquis, fully Donald Robert Perry Marquis
All religion, all life, all art, all expression come down to this: to the effort of the human soul to break through its barrier of loneliness, of intolerable loneliness, and make some contact with another seeking soul, or with what all souls seek, which is (by any name) God.
Art | Effort | God | Life | Life | Loneliness | Religion | Soul |
No invention could ever take the hard work out of creating - out of good writing, painting, composing, inventing, etc. The economy of the spirit is incurably an economy of scarcity. An affluent society might be able to dispense with the ethic of work in its everyday life, but to attain any sort of excellence it will have to implant implacable taskmasters in the breasts of its people. Indeed, without the disciple of the creative effort the affluent society will be without stability. It might have to become a creative society in order to survive.
Effort | Excellence | Good | Invention | Life | Life | Order | People | Society | Spirit | Will | Work | Writing | Excellence | Society |