This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
And only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous; to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.
Experience | Gratitude | Afraid |
We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.
Discernment | Display | Equity | Flattery | Merit | Motives | Praise | Recompense |
The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
A grateful person is a powerful person, for gratitude generates power. All abundance is based on being grateful for what we have.
I have no sympathy with the old idea that children owe such immense gratitude to their parents that they can never fulfill their obligations to them. I think the obligation is all on the other side. Parents can never do too much for their children to repay them for the injustice of having brought them into the world, unless they have insured them high moral and intellectual gifts, fine physical health, and enough money and education to render life something more than one careless struggle for necessaries.
Children | Education | Enough | Gratitude | Health | Injustice | Injustice | Life | Life | Money | Obligation | Parents | Struggle | Sympathy | World | Old | Think |
When drawing a face, any face, it is as if curtain after curtain, mask after mask, falls away, until a final mask remains, one that can no longer be removed, reduced. By the time the drawing is finished, I know a great deal about that face, for no face can hide itself for long. But although noting escapes the eye, all is forgiven beforehand. The eye does not judge, moralize, criticize. It accept the masks in gratitude as it does the long bamboos being long, the goldenrod being yellow.
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
Superpowers have a special obligation not to humiliate each other.
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a divine command, without which it would cease to be.
Meaning | Morality | Obligation | Sense |
When you have your own children you will understand your obligation to your parents.
Children | Obligation | Parents | Will | Understand |
Jean Anouilh, fully Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
Law | Obligation | Sacred |
Among the many acts of gratitude we owe to God, it may be accounted one to study and contemplate the perfections and beauties of His work of creation. Every new discovery must necessarily raise in us a fresh sense of the greatness, wisdom, and power of God.
Discovery | God | Gratitude | Greatness | Power | Sense | Study | Wisdom | Work | Discovery |
If gratitude, when exerted towards another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man, it exalts the soul into rapture when it is employed on this great object of gratitude to the beneficent Being who has given us everything we already possess, and from whom we expect everything we hope for.
My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind.
Church | Duty | Faith | God | Gratitude | Happy | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Parents | Sense |
If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time."
Change | Obligation | Time | World |
Twelve Things to Remember: The value of time. The success of perseverance. The pleasure of working. The dignity of simplicity. The worth of character. The power of kindness. The influence of example. The obligation of duty. The wisdom of economy. The virtue of patience. The improvement of talent. The joy of originating.
Character | Dignity | Duty | Example | Improvement | Influence | Joy | Kindness | Obligation | Patience | Perseverance | Pleasure | Power | Simplicity | Success | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Worth | Value |