This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
Genius | Integrity | Life | Life | Light | Means | Mind | Nature | People | Thought | Thought |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Let ordinary thinking come to an end, and extraordinary thinking will begin.
Means |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
One evidence of an empty life is that you are anxious.
Means |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Foolishness is simply the nervous preference for wrong ideas, like a sailor anxiously hugging a broken compass.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
If we choose the easy way, by letting another think for us, we must eventually tread the hard way. If we select the hard way, by insisting upon our own mental integrity, we eventually come to the easy way.
Insight | Means | Mind | Nature | Truth | Will | Circumstance |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you anymore but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
How much of my life is wrongly determined by external influences?
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Unpleasant behavior is sick behavior. If another person is unpleasant, realize that your wish for sunlight must have nothing to do with his darkness.
Means |
As all children do, like the vine's young shoots that cling to everything, she had tried to love.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Whenever troubled about something, ask yourself, “Exactly who is troubled?” Now, if this troubled person does not truly represent your real nature, could the trouble exist except in wrong thinking? No, it could not. Do not pass by this idea. Stick with it for all you are worth, for it is the secret of secrets.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Naturally only a few people were capable of reaching great spiritual heights. But a few were given the chance to attain human greatness even through their apparent worldly failure and death, an accomplishment which in ordinary circumstances they would have never achieved. To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Varying this, we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Contemplation | Conversation | Life | Life | Love | Means | Mind | Need | Nothing | Prison | Strength | Thought | Wife | Contemplation | Think | Thought |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.
Contemplation | Conversation | Life | Life | Love | Means | Need | Nothing | Prison | Strength | Wife | Contemplation | Think |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future - sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.
Action | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Problems | Responsibility | Right | Think |
Even the learned ones avoid people who are lazy because they know their efforts will go futile.
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.
Action | Change | Contemplation | Destiny | Fate | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Means | Opportunity | Problems | Responsibility | Right | Suffering | Teach | Unique | Will | Fate | Contemplation | Learn | Think |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
A man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the 'size' of human suffering is absolutely relative.