This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel
Life’s meaning rests in the eye of the beholder and in our constant desire to approach perfection. Life is so immense and complex that there is no one truth, only the rule of destiny... We do not choose life; life chooses us. Yet we try to follow our destiny, our passion our drive. We must live every minute as if it is our first and our last... The meaning of life lies in our desire to help others... Earthly life is an eternal miracle. In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand.
Desire | Destiny | Eternal | Eternity | Grace | Life | Life | Meaning | Passion | Perfection | Rule | Truth |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Happiness is salutary for the body, but it is sorrow that develops spiritual strength.
There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them.
Care | Fear | Guilt | Riches | Sorrow | Temptation | Temptation |
To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow - is the true love of men.
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion too!
There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow - the alter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
We would not be human if we did not miss loved ones; but in feeling lonesome for them we don’t want selfish attachment to be the cause of keeping them earthbound. Extreme sorrow prevents a departed soul from going ahead toward greater peace and freedom.
Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.
The irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred - that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love.
Beauty | Desire | Enjoyment | Force | Love | Opinion | Passion | Right |
When a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs... and his whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song, in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his soul.
Life | Life | Man | Melancholy | Music | Passion | Play | Soul | Spirit | Waste |
Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone... Reason is immortal, all else mortal.
‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.
Books | Good | Heart | Mind | Passion | Sensibility | Thought | Thought |