This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it." - Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner
"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself." - Alan Alda, born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo
"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself." -
"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself." -
"People are happiest when they have either accomplished something - however small - that they originally considered a challenge, or when they allow themselves to see a familiar landscape in a new way. People who are generally happy do this all the time. They expose themselves to new experiences, which may or may not produce immediate pleasure or comfort. They often take risks. Unhappy people almost never do." -
"Happiness is growth through the enlargement of one's comfort zone, the expansion of what one has attempted, and the self-confidence to attempt even more... It is unfortunate but indisputable truth that happiness often comes with a price... You will find creating a life of happiness is not one large, overwhelming task, but rather a series of small, manageable steps." -
"People are happiest when they have either accomplished something - however small - that they originally considered a challenge, or when they allow themselves to see a familiar landscape in a new way. People who are generally happy do this all the time. They expose themselves to new experiences, which may or may not produce immediate pleasure or comfort. They often take risks. Unhappy people almost never do." - Alan Epstein
"Happiness is growth through the enlargement of one's comfort zone, the expansion of what one has attempted, and the self-confidence to attempt even more... It is unfortunate but indisputable truth that happiness often comes with a price... You will find creating a life of happiness is not one large, overwhelming task, but rather a series of small, manageable steps." - Alan Epstein
"In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds" - Aristotle NULL
"The greatest baseness of man is the pursuit of glory. But it is also the great mark of his excellence; for whatever possessions he may have on earth, whatever health and essential comfort, he is not satisfied if he has not the esteem of men." - Blaise Pascal
"Minds, like bodies will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"Good temper is the most contented, the most comfortable state of the soul; the greatest happiness both for those who possess it, and for those who feel its influence. With "gentleness" in his own character, "comfort" in his house, and "good temper" in his wife, the earthly felicity of man is complete... Bad temper is its own scourge. Few things are more bitter than to feel bitter. A man's venom poisons himself more than his victim." - Charles Buxton
"When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten; when the belt fits, the belly is forgotten; when the heart is right, “for” and “against” are forgotten. There is no change in what is inside, no following what is outside, when the adjustment to events is comfortable. One begins with what is comfortable and never experiences what is uncomfortable, when one knows the comfort of forgetting what is comfortable." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze
"The Master said... 'Have no friends not equal to yourself'....The Master said, 'The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort'... The Master said, 'It is only the wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change.'... Being true to oneself is the law of God. To try to be true to oneself is the law of man." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The superior man does not set his mind either for or against anything; he will pursue whatever is right. The superior man thinks of virtue, the common man of comfort." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The final test of science is not whether it adds to our comfort, knowledge and power, but whether it adds to our dignity as men, our sense of truth." - David Sarnoff
"To begin with, it is just One Mind, all One; then we generate all the boundaries and definitions. As soon as we define ourselves in relation to another we feel more comfortable, because now we know how to be and to act. To go into a situation completely ignorant of our role is very scary. We really have to trust ourselves then. But how can we trust if we do not know who we are? So we fall back on some definition of ourselves and put our trust in that... We lose our identity when we lose our definition. We do not realize it, but that is a wonderful, extraordinary happening, because for a time we are free of our boundaries. For a moment we are nobody, but that is just too frightening. So in order to grab on to some definition, a false sense of security and comfort, what do we do right away? We get into another relationship. At least in relationship, even if it is not working for us, we know who we are." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
"The love of glory, the fear of disgrace, the incentive to succeed, the desire to live in comfort, and the instinct to humiliate others are often the cause of that courage so renowned among men." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile." - Earl Nightingale
"Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort." - Edmund Burke
"A strict belief, fate is the worst kind of slavery; on the other hand there is comfort in the thought that God will be moved by our prayers." - Epicurus NULL
"I never sleep in comfort save when I am hearing a sermon or praying to God." - François Rabelais
"It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing." - Hosea Ballou
"It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for our comfort, an even necessities. Thus, disease, opening our dyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing." - Hosea Ballou
"What the world craves today is a more spiritual and less formal religion. To the man or woman facing death, great conflict, the big problems of human life, the forms of religion are of minor concern, while the spirit of religion is a desperately needed source of inspiration, comfort and strength." - John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.
"Our happiness, satisfaction, and our understanding, even of God, will be no deeper than our capacity to know ourselves inwardly, to encounter the outer world from the deep comfort that comes from being at home in one’s own skin, from an intimate familiarity with the ways of one’s own mind and body." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"He who would pass the declining years of his life with honor and comfort, should when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young." - Joseph Addison
"The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the housed as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master." - Kahlil Gibran
"The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master." - Kahlil Gibran
"Modern man lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present. A people who seek to do this have an insatiable demand for soothsayers and oracles to assure and comfort them about the insubstantial road they tread." - Loren Eiseley
"Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in traveling, in the country." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The male form of a female liberationist is a male liberationist - a man who realizes the unfairness of having to work all his life to support a wife and children so that someday his widow may live in comfort, a man who points out that commuting to a job he doesn’t like is just as oppressive as his wife’s imprisonment in a suburb, a man who rejects his exclusion, by society and most women, from participation in childbirth and the engrossing, delightful care of young children - a man, in fact, who wants to relate himself to people and the world around him." - Margaret Mead
"Happiness? It is an illusion to think that more comfort means more happiness. Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed." - Margaret Storm Jameson
"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." - Ogden Nash
"There is no real wealth but the labor of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort." - Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
"The great make us feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere; only the low habits need palaces and banquets." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth; and truth rewarded me." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"In shame there is no comfort, but to be beyond all bounds of shame." - Philip Sidney, fully Sir Philip Sidney