This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the why for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any how.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So, if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.
Life | Life | Opportunity |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these things are things that cannot inspire envy.
Action | Change | Contemplation | Destiny | Fate | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Means | Opportunity | Problems | Responsibility | Right | Suffering | Teach | Unique | Will | Fate | Contemplation | Learn | Think |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Life | Life | Mission | Opportunity | Unique |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response.
Accomplishment | Challenge | Chance | Circumstances | Failure | Greatness | Life | Life | Majority | Men | Opportunity | People | Words | Failure | Think |
We should make efforts to acquire right knowledge and refrain from violence.
Diet | Opportunity | Regard | Ugly |
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.
Logic | Opportunity | Thought | Time | Will | Teacher | Thought |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own.
Opportunity | Peace | Time |
Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
Merit is created through deeds that benefit society, such as building temples and repairing bridges and roads. Virtue means having a good conscience and not being ashamed before Heaven or people because one has neither deceived others nor cheated oneself.
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.
Opportunity | Value |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would wish to see erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.
Opportunity | Present | Wants | Think |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself.
Age | Counsel | Day | Feelings | God | Government | Heart | Ideals | Justice | Knowledge | Mercy | Need | Opportunity | Politics | Right | Search | Time | Will | Government | Counsel | God | Understand |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion.
Children | Consequences | Equality | Men | Opportunity |
Perhaps it's obvious, but it's also so easy to forget: never get too discouraged by the apparent gap between what you believe you are capable of, and what it seems you are right now.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
I journey to the east, where I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners.
Opportunity | Protest | Respect | Respect |
No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.
Character | Good | Hell | Maxims | Opportunity |
Appearances deceive and this one maxim is a standing rule: men are not what they seem.
Books | God | Mind | Opportunity | God |
Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious.
Experience | Opportunity | Resolution |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?