This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
How can we be so willfully blind as to look for causes in nature when nature herself is an effect?
Nature |
If we follow what we love, if we live deeply and attentively in this moment, we will not feel bound by regret at the moment of our death. We will live with reverence for all things and a deep gratefulness for the gift of a single day upon the earth.
As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things you didn't do.
Regret |
This is the meaning of life - continuously to add something we haven’t know so far. That, anyway, is the meaning of all existing things. Existence is built upon the idea of the creative - that there is always something unknown to be discovered, which causes and motivates new perception, new studies, the energy to go on.
Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation.
Regret |
Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
If choice is real, if there really are alternatives, it follows that in choosing between them we are exhibiting our power as real agents, real causes and initiators of new departures in the flow of cosmic change, we thereby prove the existence of free causes.
He searches all around for his thought. But what thought? It is either passionate, or hateful, or confused. What about the past, future or present? What is past that is extinct, what is future that has not yet arrived, and the present has no stability. For thought, Kasyapa, cannot be apprehended, inside, or outside, or in between both. For thought is immaterial, invisible, nonresisting, inconceivable, unsupported, and homeless. Thought has never been seen by any of the Buddhas, nor do they see it, nor will they see it. And what the Buddhas never see, how can that be an observable process, except in the sense that dharmas proceed by the way of mistaken perception? Thought is like a magical illusion; by an imagination of what is actually unreal it takes hold of a manifold variety of rebirths. A thought is like the stream of a river, without any staying power; as soon as it is produced it breaks up and disappears. A thought is like a flame of a lamp, and it proceeds through causes and conditions. A thought is like lightning, it breaks up in a moment and does not stay on... Can thought review thought? No, thought cannot review thought. As the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, so a thought cannot see itself. Moreover, vexed and pressed hard on all sides, thought proceeds, without any staying power, like a monkey or like the wind. It ranges far, bodiless, easily changing, agitated by the objects of sense, with the six sense-fields for its sphere, connected with one thing after another. The stability of thought, its one-pointedness, its immobility, its undistraughtness, its one-pointed calm, its nondistraction, that is on the other hand called mindfulness as to thought.
Future | Illusion | Imagination | Mindfulness | Past | Perception | Power | Present | Sense | Thought | Will | Thought |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
You'll seldom experience regret for anything that you've done. It is what you haven't done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you've lost them forever.
Appreciation | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Present | Regret | Self | Will | Appreciation | Value |
It is true that no people have yet come near to establishing the ideal society. Yet Humanism asserts that human reason and human efforts are our best and, indeed, only hope; and that our refusal to recognize this point is one of the chief causes of our many human failures throughout history.