This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils bear patiently and sweetly; for only this day is ours; we are dead to yesterday, and not born to-morrow." - Jeremy Taylor
"Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which, if thou procrastinatest, thou losest; which loss is lost forever." - Jeremy Taylor
"In matters of great concern, and which must be done, there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution - to be undetermined where the case is plain, and the necessity urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it, this is as if a man should put off eating, drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed." -
"We are here because embedded in our human nature is the secret code for heaven’s self-realization. Heaven is certainly omnipresent, may even be omniscient, but is most likely not omnipotent. It needs our active participation to realize its own truth... Since we help heaven to realize itself through our self-discovery, and self-understanding in day-to-day living, the ultimate meaning of life is found in our ordinary, human existence." - Tu Weiming
"Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best." - Robert James Turnbull
"The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds that to-day is like yesterday, but he believes to-morrow will be different." - Charles Dudley Warner
"If all Earth history is compressed into one “day”, the sea is mixed two thousand times in every “minute” of it, distributing warmth and energy evenly round our water-cooled and air-conditioned planet. Every eighteen “seconds” on this collapsed time scale, the world’s rivers dump enough dissolved salts into the sea to double its concentration, but this nevertheless remains around a resolute and reasonable 3 per cent. It is vital that this should be so, because few living cells can survive a salinity which exceeds, even for just a few seconds, a value of 6 per cent. Half the living matter in the world is still found in the sea, and that fact alone seems to make the chemical regulation not only necessary, but possible." - Lyall Watson
"Historians give us the extraordinary events, and omit just what we want, the every-day life of each particular time and country." - Richard Whately
"The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for Nature to follow. Now we just set the clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White
"Men and women are biological facts. Ladies and gentleman - citizens - are social artifacts, works of political art. They carry the culture that is sustained by wise laws, and traditions of civility. A the end of the day we are right to judge a society by the character of the people it produces. That is why statecraft is, inevitably, soulcraft." - George Frederick Will
"Taste is not stationary. It grows every day, and is improved by cultivation, as a good temper is refined by religion. In its most advanced state it takes the title of judgment. Hume quotes Fontenelle's ingenious distinction between the common watch that tells the hours, and the delicately constructed one that marks the seconds and smallest differences of time." - Robert Aris Willmott
"True religion is the life we live, not the creed we profess, and some day will be recognized by quality and quantity, and not by brand." - John F. Wright
"Be wise to-day - ‘tis madness to defer." - Edward Young
"The more we live, more brief appear our life’s succeeding stages; a day to childhood seems a year, and years like passing ages." - Edward Young
"It takes vision and courage to create - it takes faith and courage to prove." - Owen D. Young
"Every day is a good day." - Yun-men NULL
"Fear God by day, and you'll sleep soundly at night." - Joseph Zabara, fully Joseph ben Meïr Zabara
"The mind of the superior man is like Heaven. When it is resentful or angry, it thunders forth its indignation. But once having loosed its feelings, it is like a sunny day with a clear sky... Such is the beauty of true manliness." - Yoshida Shoin Zenshu
"The meaning of death is not the annihilation of the spirit, but its separation from the body, and that the resurrection and day of assembly do not mean a return to a new existence after annihilation, but the bestowal of a new form or frame to the spirit." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali
"If your self-worth is a function of your performance plus the opinions of others and neither of these are predictable, then your self-worth is up for grabs every day." - Wally Armstrong and Ken Blanchard
"If the meaning of life is not a mystery, if leading meaningful lives is within the power of all of us, then we do not need to ask the question `What’s it all about?’ in despair. We can look around us and see the many ways in which life can be meaningful. We can see the value of happiness while accepting that it is not everything, which will make it easier for us at those times when it eludes us. We can learn to appreciate the pleasure of life without becoming slaves to appetites which can never be satisfied. We can see the value of success, while not interpreting that too narrowly, so that we can appreciate the project of striving to become what we want to be as well as the more visible, public signs of success. We can see the value of seizing the day, without leading us into a desperate scramble to grasp the ungraspable moment. We can appreciate the value in helping others lead meaningful lives, too, without thinking that altruism demands everything we have. And finally, we can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator to do anything at all." - Julian Baggini
"We need to confine our hopes to what we can achieve in our lifetime, always mindful of the fact that the span of life is not guaranteed. The traditional saying `Live each day as thought it were your last’ should thus be adapted to `Live each day as if it could be your last, but could equally be just one more in your short life.’" - Julian Baggini
"Whatever it is that we value in life – relationships, creativity, learning, aesthetic experience, food, sex, travel – the call to seize the day is the call to appreciate these things while we can and not to put them off indefinitely. Some things require work and time, and often the best choice is not to do today everything you want to do before you die. The true spirit of carpe diem is not to panic and try to do everything now, but to make sure every day counts. The wisdom of carpe diem is that time is short, this is the only life we have and we should not squander it." - Julian Baggini
"The mother said, “This is a better day than the last, for my children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today I have given them strength... This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God... I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know that the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them.” And the children said, “You will always walk with us, Mother, even when you have gone through the gates.”" - Temple Bailey, born Irene Temple Bailey
"There’s a scheme of evasion that has gotten into everybody. It’s as though people were to say: “I get home dog tired after a terrible day out in that jungle, and then I don’t want to think about it. Enough! I want to be brainwashed. I’m going to have my dinner and drink some beer, and I’m going to sit watching TV until I pass out – because that’s how I feel.” That means people are not putting up a struggle for the human part of themselves." - Saul Bellow
"Think that day lost whose descending sun views from thy hand no noble action done." - Jacob Bobart the Younger
"Authentic success is knowing how simply abundant your life is exactly as it is today. Authentic success is being so grateful for the many blessings bestowed on you. Authentic success is living each day with a heart overflowing." - Seán Bán Breathnach, aka SBB
"Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living... when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something greater." - Phillips Brooks
"Sad is the day for any man when he becomes absolutely satisfied with the life he is living, the thoughts that he is thinking and the deeds that he is doing; when there ceases to be forever something larger which he seeks and knows he was meant and intended to do." - Phillips Brooks
"“Yes,” I answered you last night; “No,” this morning, sir, I say; Colors seen by candle-light will not look the same by day." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"If the Day of Judgment came tomorrow, and God asked us what we had made of His revelation, of His grace and our freedom… we would be hard put to it to explain the advantages of a machine civilization whose highest efficiency is used for murder and slavery." - R. L. Bruckberger, fully Raymond Léopold Bruckberger
"Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized." - Leo Busacaglia
"Our lives will be richly meaningful lives to the extent that we find the living of them, day by day, to be, on the whole, intrinsically valuable." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
"Every day I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well." - Mary Cholmondeley
"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"It's not what you do once in a while; it's what you do day in and day out that makes the difference." - Jenny Craig, born Genevieve Guidroz
"Ho-ka hey! It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die! Strong hearts, brave hearts to the front! Weak hearts and cowards to the rear!" - Crazy Horse, formally Tashunca Uitco NULL
"It is the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life - and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that very well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy." -
"There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. What man's mind can create, man's character can control." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
"After the day’s struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul." - Max Ehrmann
"Perhaps some day, the modern man will learn that mystery is not the prison of the mind of man, it is his home." - Walter Farrell
"War is the greatest of all the awful and complex moral situations of the world - second only to the final judgment day… It is a moral pestilence. It is wrong on both sides." - P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth
"Like produces like. Good produces good. If our all day thinking is positive, constructive, kindly, we produce health, success, and freedom. If our hour-to-hour thinking is negative, pessimistic, mean, we produce sickness, failure, and unhappiness. If our life is governed by Faith we become younger, more prosperous, and more joyous, as the years pass. If our life is governed by fear, the fleeting years bring age, decrepitude, and frustration." - Emmet Fox
"Is not hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labor and industry? May not luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes, if without such a spur people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?" - Benjamin Franklin
"None of us is free from self-delusion. We all depend mightily on rationalization to get us through the day without too much angst." - Elio Frattaroli