This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such- be it so; but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live, and if others did not live, and then, if we live, t
Better | Confidence | Desire | Enough | Hope | Life | Life | Money | Need | Passion | Time | Will | Work | Trouble | Learn | Think |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of Kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of light tone against a somber background; to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance.
I don't think victory over death... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold; a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There's just this… an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.
Art | Better | Books | Criticism | Enough | Future | History | Hope | Means | Money | Past | Philosophy | Poetry | Research | Thought | Will | Art | Thought |
Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
I'm looking for facts first, but it was probably caused by extra water in the hull, ... I think people are not aware the dangers of a boat's wake.
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
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.
Go out in the world and work like money doesn't matter, Sing as if no one is listening, Love as if you have never been hurt, and Dance as if no one is watching
Desperation | Force | Hope |
There is no interruption in creation; no broken arch, no lapse; an action and its consequences embrace all nature; the chain may be longer or shorter, but never breaks. (II.3.iii)
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology homeostasis, i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
Body | Cause | Courage | Death | Hope | Mind | Will | Loss | Understand |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Art | Beauty | Hope | Influence | Journey | Life | Life | Little | Men | Nature | Prison | Art | Beauty |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The size of human suffering is absolutely relative. It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys.
Enough | Excitement | Friend | Good | Hope | Order | Thought | Thought |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaninglessness in rational terms.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings.