This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What does it mean to a physician to practice medicine without mystery? When I was a medical student, my school had a large, black-tie retirement dinner for a very famous man on the medical faculty, whose scientific contribution had earned him a Nobel prize. He was 80 years old. The entire school gathered to honor him, and famous medical people came from all over the world. This doctor gave a wonderful speech describing the progress of scientific knowledge during the 50 years that he had been a physician. We gave him a standing ovation. After we sat down he remained at the podium. There was a brief silence and then he said, There's something else important that I want to say. And I especially want to tell the students. I have been a physician for 50 years and I don't know anything more about life now than I did at the beginning. I am no wiser. It slipped through my fingers. We were stunned into silence. I remember thinking that perhaps he was senile. In retrospect, it was a very remarkable thing he did. He took an opportunity to warn us about the cage of ideas and roles and self-expectations that was closing around us, even as he spoke to us - the cage that would keep us from achieving our good purpose, which is healing. Healing is a matter of wisdom, not of scientific knowledge.
Famous | Good | Honor | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Opportunity | People | Practice | Progress | Retirement | Silence | Speech | Thinking |
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
I am not this body. I am in this body, and this is part of my incarnation and I honor it but that isn't who I am.
Honor |
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
I honor the place in you where the entire Universe resides. I honor the place of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Kites and vultures soar very high indeed, but their gaze is fixed only on the charnel-pit. The pundit has no doubt studied many books and scriptures; he may rattle off their texts, or he may have written books. But if he is attached to women, if he thinks of money and honor as the essential things, will you call him a pundit? How can a man be a pundit if his mind does not dwell on God?
Is my voice the voice of that skin of being-of what owns, is owned in honor or dishonor, that is borne and bears- or of that raw thing, the being inside it that has neither a wife, a husband, nor a child but goes at last as naked from this world as it was born into it.
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
Care | Enough | Good | Honor | Man | Story | Thought | World | Think | Thought |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
Too honor an old man one should not sit in his place or contradict his words.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to ... the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible (On the Vietnam War).
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America
Ambition, that high and glorious passion, which makes such havoc among the sons of men, arises from a proud desire of honor and distinction; and when the splendid trappings in which it is usually caparisoned are removed, will be found to consist of the mean materials of envy, pride, and covetousness.
Ron and Mary Hulnick, formally H. Ronald Hulnick and
Because I am the only person I will have a relationship with all my life, I choose: To love myself the way I am now. To always acknowledge that I am enough just the way I am. To love, honor and cherish myself. To be my own best friend. To be the person I would like to spend the rest of my life with. To always take care of myself so that I can take -care of others. To always grow, develop and share my love and life.
Care | Enough | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Relationship | Rest | Will |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.
Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
The independence of all political and other bother is a happiness.
Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.
Ever since I was a teenager delivering newspapers (for seven straight years), I have tried not to lose a single customer. I treated each one like the most important person in the world and delivered each paper as if I were delivering it to the front door of the Governor’s mansion. The key to succeeding with a paper route and the restaurant business, I would later learn, is to take care of the customer. Whether on the paper route or in my restaurants, I have found that the most effective way of promoting my business didn’t cost me anything but a little kindness to my customers.
Business | Courtesy | Experience | God | Good | Honor | Reward | Sacrifice | Success | Business | God | Happiness |
I long to see you so totally ablaze with loving fire that you become one with gentle First truth. Truly the soul's being united with and transformed into him is like fire consuming the dampness in logs. Once the logs are heated through and through, the fire burns and changes them into itself, giving them its own color and warmth and power.
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
Be conscious, O man, of the wondrous state in which the Lord God has placed you, for He created you and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body, and to His likeness according to the spirit (cf. Gen. 1:26). And [yet] all the creatures under heaven, each according to its nature, serve, know, and obey their Creator better than you. And even the demons did not crucify Him, but you together with them have crucified Him and crucify Him even now by delighting in vices and sins.
Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
But as for me, I desire this privilege from the Lord, that never may I have any privilege from man, except to do reverence to all, and to convert the world by obedience to the Holy Rule rather by example than by word.
Desire | Esteem | Honor | Lord | Love | Order | Perfection | Practice |