This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads and the strength that lifts men on and up in the great struggles of scientific pursuits and of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty, and makes a pleasure of duty.
Difficulty | Duty | Endurance | Enthusiasm | Labor | Light | Men | Pleasure | Strength | Success | Wisdom |
William Enfield, aka "The Enquirer"
Socrates taught that true felicity is not to be derived from external possessions, but from wisdom, which consists in the knowledge and practice of virtue; that the cultivation of virtuous manners is necessarily attended with pleasure as well as profit; that the honest man alone is happy; and that it is absurd to attempt to separate things which are in nature so closely united as virtue and interest.
Absurd | Cultivation | Happy | Knowledge | Man | Manners | Nature | Pleasure | Possessions | Practice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if... the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and realize one’s full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
I have ever gained the most profit, and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections.
Books | Memory | Pleasure | Understanding | Wisdom | Think |
Happiness is the legitimate fruitage of love and service. Set happiness before you as an end, no matter in what guise of wealth, or fame, or oblivion even, and you will not attain it. But renounce it and seek the pleasure of God, and that instant is the birth of your own.
Birth | Fame | God | Love | Oblivion | Pleasure | Service | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
But it is not hard work which is dreary; it is superficial work. That is always boring in the long run, and it has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is ever laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought - that is to be educated.
Education | Life | Life | Little | Pleasure | Thought | Wisdom | Work | World | Thought |
How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
The chief pleasure (in eating) does not consist in costly seasoning or exquisite flavor, but in yourself. Do you seek for sauce by sweating.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Those who are unacquainted with the world take pleasure in the intimacy of great men; those who are wiser dread the consequences.