This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego.
Challenge | Competition | Ego | Enough | Good | Life | Life | People | Philosophy | Sense | Vision | Work | Friends | Learn | Understand |
Our various improvements not only mark a diminution of the function improved upon… but they also work to dissolve some of the fundamental authority of the human itself. We are experiencing the gradual but steady erosion… of the species itself.
There is a dialectical relation between one’s life and one’s work. The former obviously influences the latter, but one’s work also becomes an influence on one’s life. It is atwo way affair, a mysterious process where what we call life and what we call creation merge, and do not merge, cross feed each other.
Blosius, fully Abbot Louis de Blois and Franciscus Ludovicus Blosius NULL
For when, though love, the soul goes beyond all work of the intellect and all images of the mind, and is rapt above itself (a favor only God can bestow), utterly leaving itself, it flows into God: then is God its peace and fullness... It sinks down into the abyss of divine love, where, dead to itself, it lives in God.
Ultimately, what we invest our lives in reveals where our heart is. The man who says he loves his family but never spends time with them because he is obsessed with his work has greater love for his work than his family… The things to which we apportion most of our time, thought, and attention reveal where our treasure in life is truly found. If God is not foremost in our lives, if he is not our greatest treasure, he does not have our heart.
Attention | Family | God | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Thought | Time | Work | God |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
The meaning of life is to be found in the living of it, and even for the individual a considerable range of possibilities and an unending flow of reflections upon your life constitutes part of that meaning. Play has no ultimate goal, no serious goal that will bring it to an end, but rather renews itself in constant repetition, with no repetition being an exact repeat of a prior instance. Living has a series of goals and is serious as well as playful, and yet the goals are always in transformation, or at least always in doubt. Circumstances are often similar, but it is not easy to specify exactness in your lived experience, even with someone with whom you have lived most of your life.
Circumstances | Doubt | Experience | Goals | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Play | Will |
Clarity about goals saves a huge amount of energy that can be productively in other areas.
There is probably no direct way to get in touch with our inner selves or to seek out satisfaction and happiness. It’s best to live by sound principles – honesty, courage, liberty, and love – and then to await what unfolds. When, inevitably, we go astray for a time, we must return, once again, to living by the principles we cherish. The formula isn’t all that difficult to understand; applying it is the work of a lifetime.
Courage | Honesty | Liberty | Love | Principles | Sound | Time | Work |
Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is required to forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart.
Achievement | Good | Heart | Story | Work |
Emotion may be considered the source of power that drives us forward toward our goals in life. It is through the energy of our emotions that we fuel our thought to make them real. It is in the presence of thought that our emotion is given direction, breathing life into the image of our thoughts
Emotions | Energy | Goals | Life | Life | Power | Thought | Thought |
Remember every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
Excellence | Self | Work |
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.
Work |
Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda
The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
Work |
When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.