This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Daphne Du Maurier, fully Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
Adulthood offered two basic choices: either to help life in its wildness and unfolding, or to resist life by choosing security and routine.
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Defense | Government | Property | Reality | Security |
The Whole Truth is fathomless, ever free of containment, confinement, or conformity... No teacher, religion, or cult can hold exclusive possession of the Truth. The hallmark of Truth is its inclusive nature; no one or no thing could ever be excluded from It.
Conformity | Cult | Nature | Religion | Truth |
Religion is the vision of something that stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehensions, something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibly, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
Giving |
Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy... In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a prosperous fool.
Character | Good | Men | Nothing | Understanding | Wealth | Value |