This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress." - Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
"There is a dialectical relation between one’s life and one’s work. The former obviously influences the latter, but one’s work also becomes an influence on one’s life. It is atwo way affair, a mysterious process where what we call life and what we call creation merge, and do not merge, cross feed each other." - Etel Adnan
"People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego." - Carol Adrienne
"When people feel separated, they try to make things work by concentrating only on their own willpower and trying to control everything. When you remember to align yourself with your own nature and your life purpose, you naturally are in touch with your natural power. When you align yourself with even a single value, like compassion, trust, self-respect, or following through on synchronicities – life becomes more meaningful, often more fun, more hopeful, and you feel resourceful." - Carol Adrienne
"The reward of work is to come, whereas the endurance of the labor is immediate." - Al-Jāḥiẓ, full name Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī NULL
"No matter! – so long as the world is the work of eternal goodness, and so long as conscience has not deceived us – to give happiness, and to do good, there is our only law, our anchor of salvation, our beacon light, our reason for existing. All religions may crumble away; so long as this survives we have still an ideal, and life is worth living." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"Threats don't work with the person who's got nothing to lose." - Maduro Ash
"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
"Money, material thought it be, does lie at the base of the most useful work you do. In itself nothing, it is the basis of much of the best effort which can be made for spiritual purposes." - A. J. Balfour, fully Arthur James "A.J. Balfour, the Earl of Balfour
"Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity." - Daniel Barenboim
"Our various improvements not only mark a diminution of the function improved upon… but they also work to dissolve some of the fundamental authority of the human itself. We are experiencing the gradual but steady erosion… of the species itself." - Sven Birkerts
"For when, though love, the soul goes beyond all work of the intellect and all images of the mind, and is rapt above itself (a favor only God can bestow), utterly leaving itself, it flows into God: then is God its peace and fullness... It sinks down into the abyss of divine love, where, dead to itself, it lives in God." - Blosius, fully Abbot Louis de Blois and Franciscus Ludovicus Blosius NULL
"If justice is the end of the law, the law the work of the prince, and the prince the image of god, it follows of necessity that the law of the prince should be modeled on the law of God." - Jean Bodin
"Ultimately, what we invest our lives in reveals where our heart is. The man who says he loves his family but never spends time with them because he is obsessed with his work has greater love for his work than his family… The things to which we apportion most of our time, thought, and attention reveal where our treasure in life is truly found. If God is not foremost in our lives, if he is not our greatest treasure, he does not have our heart." - Joe Boot
"Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand." - Margaret Bourke-White
"The mathematical odds of assembling a living organism are so astronomical that nobody still believes that random chance accounts for the origin of life. Even it you optimized the conditions, it wouldn’t work. If you took all the carbon in the universe and put it on the face of the earth, allowed it to chemically react at the most rapid rate possible, and left it for a billion years, the odds of creating just one functional protein molecule would be one chance in 10 with 60 zeros after it… The probability of linking together just one hundred amino acids to create one protein molecule by chance would be the same as a blindfolded man finding one marked grain of sand somewhere in the vastness of the Sahara Desert – and doing it not just once, but three different times." - Walter L. Bradley
"There is probably no direct way to get in touch with our inner selves or to seek out satisfaction and happiness. It’s best to live by sound principles – honesty, courage, liberty, and love – and then to await what unfolds. When, inevitably, we go astray for a time, we must return, once again, to living by the principles we cherish. The formula isn’t all that difficult to understand; applying it is the work of a lifetime." - Peter R. Breggin
"Remember every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." - James A. Brewer
"When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight." - Michael Bridge
"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle." - Phillips Brooks
"Prayer is not a vain attempt to change God’s will: it is a filial desire to learn God’s will and share it. Prayer is not a substitute for work: it is the secret spring and indispensable ally of all true work – the clarifying of work’s goal, the purifying of its motives, and the renewing of its zeal." - George Arthur Buttrick
"Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is required to forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart." - Allan C Carlson
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to at least three-fold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for becoming existence." -
"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda
"There is time for work. And a time for love. That leaves no other time." - Coco Chanel
"In war, as in life, it is often necessary, when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"The great successful people of the world . . . think ahead and create their mental picture, and then go to work materializing that picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit but steadily building--steadily building." - Robert Collier
"Believe in what you are doing. If you’ve got an idea that’s really powerful, you’ve just got to ignore the people who tell you it won’t work, and hire people who embrace your vision." - Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
"There is no substitute for hard work." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
"A conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God." - Albert Einstein
"Influence comes out of the work that you’ve done and the things you’ve stood for. Influence and power shouldn’t be given to just anybody who wants them." - Millicent Fenwick
"I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business." - Benjamin Franklin
"At the bottom, people tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. In the middle, people grant that money has something to do with it, but think education and the kind of work you do almost equally important. Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education." - Paul Fussell
"God is no dictator. He leaves us the freedom to master ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did." - Newt Gingrich, fully Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich, born Newton Leroy McPherson
"I cannot believe that the life eternal is one endless idleness. If it were endless duration only, it would be endless boredom and scarcely willed by God. What we may be given to do in the next life we cannot say, and with so many forms of work in this life related to physical existence, it is useless to speculate. But if there is a fellowship of persons, God will give us tasks for their enrichment." - Georgia Harkness
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good… Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons… Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather and ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Václav Havel
"If the goal of life is to do the very best one can do at each unfolding moment of existence, then, through spiritual work, one has already escaped the primary cause of suffering. In the stop-frame of the radical present, there is no life story to react to or edit. With this one-pointedness of mind, it soon becomes obvious that everything merely `is as it is’ without comment or adjectives. The illusion of `Now’ is replaced by the reality of `Always’." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"In spiritual work, there is no tangible worldly gain to be acquired, but there is instead an inner reward of pleasure, satisfaction, and even joy. Goals replace gains as motives. There is a greater freedom from living on the exciting knife edge of the moment than being a prisoner of the past or having expectations of the future." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"Life is a drama, and religion has become routine. The soul calls for exaltation, and religion offers repetition. Honesty, veracity, does not come about by itself. Freshness, depth has to be acquired. One must work on them constantly." - Abraham Joshua Heschel