This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence.
Beauty | Comfort | Energy | Eternal | Excellence | God | Health | Joy | Laughter | Light | Pain | Passion | Riches | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | World | Riches | Hardship | Beauty |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature - takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, vis.: the mind and soul of man.
Art | Intention | Man | Mind | Nature | Soul | Study | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.
Envy | Love | Man | Reason | Self | Self-love | Silence | Wisdom |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Those two fatal words, Mind and Thine..."Do not forget, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that there are two kinds of beauty, one being of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul is revealed through intelligence, modesty, right conduct, generosity, and good breeding, all of which qualities may exist in an ugly man; and when one's gaze is fixed upon beauty of this sort and not upon that of the body, love is usually born suddenly and violently."
Beauty | Body | Conduct | Generosity | Good | Intelligence | Love | Man | Mind | Modesty | Qualities | Right | Soul | Ugly | Wisdom | Words | Beauty |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose, new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterward.
Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Reality, union with reality, is the true state of the soul when confident and healthy. Unreality is what keeps us from ourselves, and most pleasures are unreal.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
Hope | Inspiration | Knowledge | Man | Power | Soul | Wisdom | World | Youth | Youth |
To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that goes with work well done - this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.
Day | Desire | Heart | Joy | Laughter | Little | Love | Men | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Reverence | Smile | Waste | Wisdom | Work |