This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
The roots of a child’s ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child’s having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return.
Ability | Safe | Companionship | Child |
Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
Relying on politics for your sense of who you are greatly impedes your ability to remain true to yourself, your views, and your values.
What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall, that place among the rocks--is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have.
It is in deeds that man becomes aware of what his life really is, of his power to harm and to hurt, to wreck and to ruin; of his ability to derive joy and to bestow it upon others; to relieve and to increase his own and other people’s tensions. It is in the employment of his will, not in reflection, that he meets his own self as it is; not as he should like it to be.
Ability | Deeds | Harm | Joy | Life | Life | Man | People | Power | Reflection | Self | Will | Deeds |
Roy L. Smith, aka Mr. Methodist
The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the person.
No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
Time | Worth | Friendship |
Robert H. Schuller, fully Robert Harold Schuller
The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.
Thinking |
Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
The primary indication… of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
This world is by definition the place where God hides Himself. It contains His light, i.e., the knowledge of Him, in a hidden way. And the purpose of life is to discover God; or as the prophet says: “to fill the world with the knowledge of God.”
God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Purpose | Purpose | World | God |
Obert C. Tanner, fully Obert Clark Tanner
Perhaps the clearest and deepest meaning of brotherhood is the ability to imagine yourself in the other person’s position, and then treat that person as if you were him. This form of brotherhood takes a lot of imagination, a great deal of sympathy, and a tremendous amount of understanding.
Ability | Brotherhood | Imagination | Meaning | Position | Sympathy | Understanding |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole - the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.
Heaven is my Father, the earth my mother, and even a tiny creature such as myself finds an intimate place in their midst. In everything that moves throughout the universe, I see my own body, and in everything that governs the universe, my own soul. All men are my brethren, and all things my companions.
Body | Earth | Father | Heaven | Men | Mother | Soul | Universe |
Creativity is the retention throughout life of something that belongs properly to infant experience: the ability to create the world. . . . By creative living I mean not getting killed or annihilated all the time by compliance or by reacting to the world that impinges; I mean seeing everything afresh all the time… When we are surprised at ourselves we are being creative, and we find we can trust our own unexpected originality.
Ability | Compliance | Creativity | Experience | Life | Life | Originality | Time | Trust | World |