This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it.
Character | Childhood | Evil | Freedom | Gold | Mankind | Suspicion | Wisdom | Happiness |
George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success.
Action | Chance | Esteem | Life | Life | Reputation | Success | Usefulness | Wisdom |
Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe
If the body is only the vehicle by which the soul can access the experience of physical living, then there is no real physical me. The soul (or life force) is the only real me. If you and I (the souls) want to achieve the most from this earthly lifetime, the more varied the experiences we should seek. That said, it’s too easy for you and me to fall into a comfort zone and try to avoid change. To keep this from happening, the experiences change rapidly as a result of the body moving from infancy though old age. The physical changes help to enhance our learning curve, our ability to serve, and our chance to evolve.
Ability | Age | Body | Chance | Change | Comfort | Experience | Force | Infancy | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | Soul | Wisdom | Old |
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
I study much, and the more I study, the oftener I go back to those first principles which are so simple that childhood itself can lisp them.
Childhood | Principles | Study | Wisdom |
If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
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 |
Martha Berry, fully Martha McChesney Bery
The best way to help anyone is to give him a chance to help himself.
Chance |
George Burns, born Nathan Birnbaum
If you were to go around asking people what would make them happier, you’d get answers like “a new car,” a bigger house,” “a raise in pay,” or “winning the lottery.” Probably not one in a hundred would say “a chance to help people,” and yet that is what brings about the most happiness of all.
The mathematical odds of assembling a living organism are so astronomical that nobody still believes that random chance accounts for the origin of life. Even it you optimized the conditions, it wouldn’t work. If you took all the carbon in the universe and put it on the face of the earth, allowed it to chemically react at the most rapid rate possible, and left it for a billion years, the odds of creating just one functional protein molecule would be one chance in 10 with 60 zeros after it… The probability of linking together just one hundred amino acids to create one protein molecule by chance would be the same as a blindfolded man finding one marked grain of sand somewhere in the vastness of the Sahara Desert – and doing it not just once, but three different times.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative [or creation] there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too... Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.
Action | Chance | Grace | Ideas | Ignorance | Initiative | Magic | Power | Providence | Truth | Think |