This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Be willing to pity the misery of the stranger! Thou givest to-day thy bread to the poor; to-morrow the poor may give it to thee.
Lord Nottingham, Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Lord Howard of Effingham
No man’s credit can fall so low but that, if he bear his shame as he should to, and profit by it as he ought to do, it is in his own power to redeem his reputation.
Babe Paley, fully Barbara Cushing "Babe" Mortimer Paley
The common course of things is in favor of happiness. Happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want.
Attention | Disease | Health | Order | Rule | Wisdom | Happiness |
The shame of slavedom is incurred not when one is held from the hurtful but when the personal good must be yielded in favor of another’s.
Martha Washington, fully Martha Dandridge Curtis Washington
I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
Circumstances | Experience | Happy | Wisdom | Happiness |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom.
Dignity | Evil | Freedom | God | Good | Happy | Man | Price | Suffering | Wickedness | World |
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.
Glory, built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
Glory | Guilt | Principles | Shame |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
As painful as shame is, it does seem to be the guardian of many of the secret, unexplored aspects of our beings. Repressed shame must be experienced if we are to come to terms with the good, the bad, and the unique of what we are.
Patricia Goldman-Rakic, born Patricia Shoer
The ultimate function of the neurons in the prefrontal cortex is to excite or inhibit activity in other parts of the brain.” In prohibition and shame we excite the most destructive systems and inhibit the creative ones.
Shame |
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
Will |
Honor and shame from no condition rise; act well you part: there all the honor lies.
What so great happiness as to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What so great misery as to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?
We know that we live in contradiction, but that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as men is to find those few first principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice in the world which is so obviously unjust, and make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century.
Contradiction | Justice | Men | Nations | Principles | Will | World | Happiness |