This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster." - Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun
"The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard." - William Ellery Channing
"Our moral strength is in ourselves, in our patience, in our courage, in our decision and in our resolution." - William J. Donovan, fully William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan
"What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility." - Johann Kaspar Lavater
"The rationalist’s dilemma: either the free act is possible, or it is not - either the event originates in me or is imposed on me from outside, does not apply to our relations with the world and with our past. Our freedom does not destroy our situation, but gears itself to it: as long as we are alive, our situation is open, which implies both that it calls up specially favoured modes of resolution, and also that it is powerless to bring one into being by itself." - Maurice Merleau-Ponty
"The road to resolution lies by doubt." - Francis Quarles
"To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself; earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence." - Samuel Smiles
"The most fearful characteristic of vice is its irresistible fascination - the ease with which it sweeps away resolution, and wins a man to forget his momentary outlook, and his throb of penitence, in the embrace of indulgence." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"Despair is the offspring of fear; of laziness, and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and often of honesty too. I would not despair unless I saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate; and signed and sealed by necessity." - Jeremy Collier
"He that resolves upon any great and good end, has, by the very resolution, scaled the chief barrier to it. He will find such resolution removing difficulties, searching out or making means, giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness and like the star to the wise men of old, ever guiding him nearer and nearer to perfection." - Tyron Edwards
"Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution." - Harvey Samuel Firestone
"But little is accomplished, because but little is vigorously attempted, because difficulties are magnified. A timorously cautious spirit, so far from acting with resolution, will never think itself in possession of the preliminaries for acting at all. Perhaps perseverance has been the radical principle of every truly great character." - James "Jim" L. Foster
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing." - Abraham Lincoln
"Repentance is a hearty sorrow for our past misdeeds, and is a sincere resolution and endeavor, to the utmost of our power, to conform all our actions to the law of God. It does not consist in one single act of sorrow, but in doing works meet for repentance; in a sincere obedience to the law of Christ for the remainder of our lives." - John Locke
"Be not too slow in the breaking of a sinful custom; a quick, courageous resolution is better than a gradual deliberation; in such a combat he is the bravest soldier that lays about him without fear or wit. Wit pleads, fear disheartens; he that would kill Hydra had better strike off one neck than five heads: fell the tree, and the branches are soon cut off." - Francis Quarles
"Necessity of action takes away fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune." - Francis Quarles
"Never tell your resolution beforehand." - John Selden
"Time is never more misspent than while we declaim against the want of it; all our actions are then tinctured with peevishness. The yoke of life is certainly the least oppressive when we carry it with good-humor; and in the shades of rural retirement, when we have once acquired a resolution to pass our hours with economy sorrowful lamentations on the subject of time misspent and business neglected never torture the mind." - Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
"In its purest form music is not a representational but rather a nonobjective, nonverbal world, it is a world of its own, almost a creatio ex hihilo, an occasion for immediacy of experience, a nonreducible mode of beauty, of contrast and resolution, of order and ecstasy flowing through and beyond the order. Order, and ecstasy rooted in order: that sounds like the relation between law and love, law and gospel." - James Luther Adams
"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect in human weakness and in human responsibility. Without a global resolution in human consciousness nothing will change for the better and catastrophe will be unavoidable." - Václav Havel
"The life that conquers is the life that moves with a steady resolution and persistence toward a predetermined goal. Those who succeed are those who have thoroughly learned the immense importance of plan in life, and the tragic brevity of time." - W. J. Davison
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing." - Abraham Lincoln
"Harmonious living tells of harmonious thinking. A turbulent life reveals some kind of inner turmoil or lack of resolution... Outer events are simply the skin and bones of inner thoughts, and to really take control of our lives, we must treat them as one. Concentrate on that which you would become, not that which you now believe you are, and you will enter a new realm of consciousness - one of chosen good." - Alan Cohen
"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity." - Alan Cohen
"Harmonious living tells of harmonious thinking. A turbulent life reveals some kind of inner turmoil or lack of resolution... Outer events are simply the skin and bones of inner thoughts, and to really take control of our lives, we must treat them as one. Concentrate on that which you would become, not that which you now believe you are, and you will enter a new realm of consciousness - one of chosen good." -
"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity." -
"Harmonious living tells of harmonious thinking. A turbulent life reveals some kind of inner turmoil or lack of resolution... Outer events are simply the skin and bones of inner thoughts, and to really take control of our lives, we must treat them as one. Concentrate on that which you would become, not that which you now believe you are, and you will enter a new realm of consciousness - one of chosen good." -
"We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity." -
"All the soul of man is resolution; which expires never from valiant men, till their last breath; and when with it, like a flame extinguish’d for want of matter; it does not die but rather ceases to live." - George Chapman
"Freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of following the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence of inclinations, at least as motives determining (though not as affecting) our desire, and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in following my moral maxims, it is the only source of an unaltered contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no special feeling." - Immanuel Kant
"Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution." - John Burroughs
"Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution." - Kahlil Gibran
"Purpose, resolution and harmony unify life and give it meaning by transforming it into a seamless flow experience. Whoever achieves this state will never really lack anything else. A person whose consciousness is so ordered need not fear unexpected events, or even death. Every living moment will make sense, and most of it will be enjoyable." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"It is worth remembering - particularly since it has been so uniformly suppressed - that the U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"Let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation – to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Hope is the fawning traitor of the mind, while, under colour of friendship, it robs it of its chief force of resolution." - Philip Sidney, fully Sir Philip Sidney
"In no direction that we turn do we find ease or comfort. If we are honest and if we have the will to win we find only danger, hard work and iron resolution." - Wendell Lewis Willkie
"Weakness has many stages. There is a difference between feebleness by the impotency of the will, of the will to the resolution, of the resolution to the choice of means, of the choice of the means to the application." - Cardinal de Retz, Jean Francois-Paul de Gondil
"We are able to expand our awareness beyond the perceived limitations of our own person and access the dimensions of a transpersonal consciousness. As we open ourselves to the realization of the in-formed universe, this shift in our collective awareness heralds a resolution in the schisms that have divided us for so long – both among and within us. It is this cosmic odyssey that the ancients often portrayed in their myths and legends and their adepts described as the sundering of the One to its ultimate reunion with itself." - Ervin László
"One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’." - John Burroughs
"If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, fully Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
"Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency ask the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The foundation behind the practice of Yoga, or meditation proper, is the resolution of conflicts and fulfilment of all longings to the utmost extent until one reaches infinity itself. What a grand thing is Yoga! Now we realise! We will be surprised that our very life is there only for that goal. Now we will be able to appreciate that Yoga is not a religion. It is not Hinduism. It is not Buddhism. It is not Christian mysticism. It is not anything of that sort." - Pandit Usharbudh Arya
"In the dimension of time, consciousness is experienced as the eternal present with a strong element of teleology: It is the future that pulls rather than the past that pushes. Some traditional views of man interpret the present as determined by the past. Specifically, these views hold that present events or problems are the workings out of early programing. Maturity then becomes the resolution of childhood conflicts.... An alternative interpretation of the situation is to seek ways to outgrow, i.e., genuinely overcome, a problem.... Genuine growth is the experience of being pulled or attracted by a goal in the future (Aristotle's final cause or telos), not that of being pushed into action (Aristotle's efficient cause or aitia). And in directing our gaze to the future, we utilize whatever material from the past we deem appropriate, including the use of the past to interfere with the future. Under this analysis, the past becomes almost irrelevant in the experience and conception of the present. Men like Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle and Bertrand Russell were able to maintain joy, growth, and vigor in old age because the future and not the past was experienced as determining their present." - Peter Koestenbaum