This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"May I suggest that the deepest experience in vulnerability is to completely accept its Suchness as the ego/Ego coming into fuller relationship with the Divine. Thought forms of past, present, and future are simply too ego indulgent in the later stages of life. Variations on this theme are Masochism/Sadism and Pleasers/InyourFaceers. They are legitimate paths unless arrested by the ego too frightened to see what actually lurks under the drive to power." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
"The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
"Mathematicians, it is often said, tend to be musical. It is less well known that problems arising from music have played an important role in the discovery of fundamental mathematical ideas. Questions about the vibrations of a piano string led to a fierce controversy that forced mathematicians to clarify their ideas about area, continuity, and the convergence of series." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
"Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"When a revolutionary party has not the support of a majority either among the vanguard of the revolutionary class or among the rural population, there can be no question of a rising. A rising must have not only the majority, but must have the incoming revolutionary tide over the whole country, the complete moral and political bankruptcy of the old regime--and a deep-seated sense of insecurity among all these irresolute elements." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"The parents own everything and people do not have anything, it is the masterpiece of reason and justice. I cannot find anything as extraordinary as the Padres, who are fighting here against the king of Spain and Portugal, and that here in Europe confess those same kings kill Spanish here, and in Madrid send them to heaven: is something portentous" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar
"Even though our very survival is in question, we tend to look at the crisis superficially, emotionally, sentimentally. We have tried in subtle ways to absolve ourselves of any deep responsibility for the condition of the human family. We perceive ourselves, or our small identity groups, as truly sincere and peace-loving, and we ascribe to outsiders, to those apart, to power-hungry villains, responsibility for aggression and wars." - Vimala Thakar
"Two big questions present themselves to every parent in one form or another: "What kind of human being do I want my child to become?" and "How can I go about making that happen?"" - Virginia Satir
"I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucent'--and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me." - 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." - 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." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant." - 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
"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." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." - 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." - 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
"He should put in all efforts to increase his wealth and grain. He should only speak well about others. The person who does all these things always remains untouched by misery and dwells in happiness and peace." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda
"We should make efforts to acquire right knowledge and refrain from violence." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"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." - Vannevar Bush
"Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"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." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
"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." - 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." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself." - 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." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"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 Butler-Bowdon
"I journey to the east, where I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
"Appearances deceive and this one maxim is a standing rule: men are not what they seem." - William Havard
"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." - William James
"Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious." - William James
"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?" - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"A great many men — some comparatively small men now — if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"Now, to appease his conscience when he did the balance of a long life, he had taken this strange journey and was home to a woman with such expectations. The outer walls were the color of ash cherchevetata windows and balcony railings were painted in two different colors - lighter and darker shade of gray. When discrete scenery around the double door were completed, the block shone with dazzling beauty. Most striking feature of the building, which at the insistence of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov was built in the style ar nuvo9, although it was no longer in vogue was that floors were completely different. The apartments on the ground floor, as if to compensate for the lack of balconies were much larger windows than others. As for the balcony, and they were different on each floor. terrace on the second floor were heavily exported forward in graceful semicircle, and those on the third floor were more retracted so that one could easily sit without being visible from the outside. Balcony on the fourth floor were like those of the second, except that instead of metal railings had curb decorated with embossed flowers, and at both ends were attached marble pots, in which you can grow plants. differences were so striking that one wondered Yet if the residents of these apartments they live in the same place. reliefs on the front façade to balance between decoration windows on the first and second floor, very eye-catching. Here in the circle was painted peacock with a small head and a huge body. His five items, two right, two left and one right on the head sticking out of different countries. One pointed toward the sky, and the other - the four cardinal directions. At the end of each feather was painted a large eye, beautifully finished with subtle touches that resemble eyelashes. In complete contrast, the head of the peacock was brought down. Directly below his feet in a faint oval frame was inscribed the initials of the spouses. - Elif Shafak , The Flea Palace" - Elif Safak
"Was she now to be clapped down under an adjective, to crawl round life-long inside some quality like a fly in a tumbler?" - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
"This Divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord from His Divine love." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"I like someone who laughs, but not all the time, and not too loud. I like it when someone laughs at the world, and not at someone in particular — when some particularly absurd thing happens, not just someone falling down." - Erin McKean
"sometimes, it seems to me that, the smaller the things is that people want, the bigger the disappointment when they don't get it, or it's not exactly right -dora" - Erin McKean
"Professor Richard N. Current fusses, not irrelevantly, about the propriety of fictionalising actual political figures. I also fuss about this. But he has fallen prey to the scholar-squirrel's delusion that there is a final Truth revealed only to the tenured few in their footnote maze; in this he is simply naïve." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"As we cleanse the inner vessel, there will have to be changes made in our own personal lives, in our families, and in the Church. The proud do not change to improve, but defend their position by rationalizing. Repentance means change, and it takes a humble person to change. But we can do it." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Jefferson warned that we should not talk about confidence in men but that we should inhibit their power through the Constitution." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The right man comes at the right time." - Italian Proverbs