This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Most of us, swimming against tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement and we'll make the goal. Say "Thank you!" whenever you think of it. Say "Nice job!" to that workman who put extra effort into his task. Say "Atta boy!" to the fellow who is struggling through in the face of odds. You'll get a whale of a lot of joy out of life that way. And people will love you.
Effort | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Need | Nothing | People | Praise | Will | World | Trouble | Think |
What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
To give heart and mind to God, so that they are ours no longer - to do good without being conscious of it, to pray ceaselessly and without effort as we breathe - to love without stopping to reflect upon our feelings - such is the perfect forgetfulness of self, which casts us upon God, as a babe rests upon its mother's breast.
Effort | Feelings | Forgetfulness | Good | Heart | Love | Mind |
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of effort is the measure of the results.
Anne Sullivan, fully Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Macy
A strenuous effort must be made to train young people to think for themselves and take independent charge of their lives.
John Fowles, fully John Robert Fowles
I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic that my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope-- an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose of one permanently useful thing, Oxford's greatest gift to civilized life: Socratic honesty. It showed me, very intermittently, that it is not enough to revolt against one's past. One day I was outrageously bitter among some friends about the Army; back in my own rooms later it suddenly struck me that just because I said with impunity things that would have apoplexed my dead father, I was still no less under his influence. The truth was I was not a cynic by nature, only by revolt. I had got away from what I hated, but I hadn't found where I loved, and so I pretended that there was nowhere to love. Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.
Cynic | Cynicism | Day | Despise | Effort | Enough | Failure | Life | Life | Nothing | Truth | Failure | Friends |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
I believe it’s impossible to claim you have taught, when there are students who have not learned. With that commitment, from my first year as an English teacher until my last as UCLA basketball teacher/coach, I was determined to make the effort to become the best teacher I could possibly be, not for my sake, but for all those who were placed under my supervision.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Goals achieved with little effort are seldom worthwhile or lasting.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Remember, results aren’t the criteria for success — it’s the effort made for achievement that is most important.
Achievement | Effort | Success |
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort - to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires - and expires, too soon, too soon - before life itself.
Katherine Anne Porter, born Callie Russell Porter
The whole effort for the past one hundred years has been to remove the moral responsibility from the individual and make him blame his own human wickedness on his society, but he helps to make his society, you see, and he will not take his responsibility for his part in it.
Blame | Effort | Individual | Past | Responsibility | Wickedness | Will |
Katharine Hepburn, fully Katharine Houghton Hepburn
The thing about life is that you must survive. Life is going to be difficult, and dreadful things will happen. What you do is move along, get on with it, and be tough. Not in the sense of being mean to others, but being tough with yourself and making a deadly effort not to be defeated.
Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL
Even though scolded by the wicked or insulted, ridiculed, calumniated, beaten, bound, robbed of his living or spat upon or otherwise abominabley treated by the ignorant-being thus variously shaken and placed in dire extremities, the man who desires his well-being should deliver himself by his own effort through patience and non-resistence.
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
Meditation, then, is not so much a part of this or that particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all humankind--an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
All of our misfortunes reveal to us the presence in us of the divine, of the immortal, of the self-sufficient which constitutes the foundation of our life. Death reveals to us fully our true Self. That which happens to man after his death we cannot and ought not to know. We could not live or do God's work if we knew it. If what awaits us after death were worse than what we meet with here on earth, we would prize this life even more than we do now, and there is no greater impediment to the fulfillment of God's will than concern for one's own life. If what awaits us after death were better than now, then we would scorn this life and make every effort to flee from it.
Better | Death | Effort | Fulfillment | Life | Life | Man | Will | Work |
The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group.
Authority | Effort | Individual | Principles |