This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Affliction comes to us all not to make us sad, but sober, not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.
Affliction | Darkness | Day | Joy | Wise |
Jack Dempsey, fully William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey, "The Manassa Mauler"
I never went to bed in my life and I never ate a meal in my life without saying a prayer. I know my prayers have been answered thousands of times, and I know that I never said a prayer in my life without something good coming of it.
Do not run after happiness, but seek to do good, and you will find that happiness will run after you. The day will dawn full of expectation, the night will fall full of repose. This world will seem a very good place, and the world to come a better place still.
Better | Dawn | Day | Expectation | Good | Repose | Will | World | Happiness |
Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they; to God’s word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else.
Beauty | Day | God | Health | Lord | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | People | Rest | Riches | Skill | Understanding | Wisdom | Riches | Beauty | God |
Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.
The studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption - pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them and see what conceits they entertain - they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.
Day | Energy | Fear | Hunger | Society | Truth | Will | Society |
Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds.
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
There is a bridge between time and eternity; and this bridge is Atman, the spirit of man. Neither day nor night cross that bridge, nor old age, nor death, nor sorrow. It is this spirit that we must find and know: man must find his own soul. He who has found and knows his soul has found all the worlds, has achieved all his desires.
Age | Day | Death | Eternity | Man | Old age | Sorrow | Soul | Spirit | Time | Old |
T. E. Lawrence, fully Thomas Edward Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia
All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that it was vanity; But dreamers of day are dangerous men, that they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.
Zohar or The Zohar, literally "Splendor or Radiance" NULL
The soul testifies at night to what the man does by day.
Out of eternity this new day is born; into eternity at night will return.
If we imagine ourselves as being every bit as huge, deep, mysterious, and awe-inspiring as the night sky, we might begin to appreciate how complicated we are as individuals, and how much of who we are is unknown not only to others but to ourselves.
Awe |
Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar... Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice. Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment... This above all: To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man. Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Polonius at I, iii)
Censure | Day | Judgment | Man | Means | Reserve | Self | Thought | Thought |
If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day. If you live only for yourself you are always an immediate danger of being bored to death with the repetition of your own views and interests. No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellowmen. If your ambition has the momentum of an express train at full speed, if you can no longer stop your mad rush for glory, power, or intellectual supremacy, try to divert your energies into socially useful channels before it is too late. For those who seek the larger happiness and greater effectiveness open to human beings there can be but one philosophy of life, a philosophy of constructive altruism. The truly happy man is always a fighting optimist. Optimism includes not only altruism but also social responsibility, social courage and objectivity. The good life demands a working philosophy as an orientating map of conduct. This is the golden way of life. This is the satisfying life. This is the way to be happy though human.
Altruism | Ambition | Courage | Danger | Day | Death | Ego | Fighting | Gold | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Optimism | Philosophy | Service | Will | Writing | Ambition | Danger | Happiness |
This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.