This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing is predestined. The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.
No matter how or when a person acquired their irrational beliefs and self-sabotaging habits, they now, in the present, choose to maintain them - and that is why they are disturbed. One's past history and present life conditions importantly affect one; but they don't disturb one. A person's present philosophy is the main contributor of their current disturbance.
History | Life | Life | Past | Philosophy | Present | Self |
I will not let past failures haunt me. Even though my life is scarred with mistakes, I refuse to rummage through my trash heap of failures. I will admit them. I will correct them. I will press on. Victoriously. No failure is fatal. It's OK to stumble...I will get up. It's OK to fail...I will rise again. Today I will make a difference.
The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values. Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.
Future | Myth | Order | Past | Present | Society | Tradition | Society |
The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.
Greatness | Past | Understand |
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
In order to be utterly happy, the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past - which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.
It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.
Bear well in mind that your whole past was but a birth and a becoming.
In most respects the future will be like what the past has been.
Our very psychology has been shaken to its foundation. To grasp the meaning of the world today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true nature, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.
Language | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Past | Psychology | Reason | World |
Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |
Arthur C Clarke, formally Sir Arthur Charles Clark
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
In the vast tapestry of manifestation, the entire universe issues forth into form. Alternatively, it is re-absorbed into formlessness. Each individual life can be likened to a thread in a tapestry. So, if a person could see the whole chain of his incarnations, some of which, from the point of where he stands, would appear to be causally past and others causally future... There is a two-fold pattern of manifestation. The pure being, which in essence you are, is manifested horizontally and vertically through space and time: horizontally it takes form as all the other beings of your present world, vertically as all the past and future incarnations of your present person. You stand at the intersection of the two patterns.
Future | Individual | Life | Life | Past | Present | Space | Time | Universe | World |
[Man’s] self-conscious existence as man forces on him a choice of uses for his faculties... This choice is what is called free will. Free will, therefore, not only a prerogative but an obligation for man. Free will thus understood, has nothing to do with destiny. It is a power which man is compelled by his own nature to use, whether the use he makes of it is predestined or not... the responsibility of deciding rests with me just the same whether the outcome is predetermined or not. If it is predetermined, it is my own past habit-forming and character-forming decisions in this and previous lifetimes which have predetermined it; and this decision in its turn will help to condition my mind, thus determining future ones.
Character | Choice | Decision | Destiny | Existence | Free will | Future | Habit | Man | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Obligation | Past | Power | Responsibility | Self | Will |
The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousand-fold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard attained in times past by rare saints.
Age | Conduct | Energy | Evil | Good | Mankind | Past | Power |