This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Real faith… means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be compromised in any formula… Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility.
Ability | People | Responsibility | Success |
Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater things than we realize. How much one actually achieves depends largely on: 1. Desire. 2. Faith. 3. Persistent Effort. 4. Ability. But if you are lacking the first three factors, your ability will not balance out the lack. So concentrate on the first three and the results will amaze you.
Ability | Balance | Desire | Effort | Faith | Mind | Wants | Will |
The best teacher is not necessarily the one who possesses the most knowledge but the one who most effectively enables his students to believe in their ability to learn.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)
Ability | Cooperation | Energy | Evolution | Harmony |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.
Ability | Adversity | Challenge | Life | Life | Survival | Learn |
The yen to become wanderers among the stars involves more than the need to satisfy a cosmic curiosity. Basically, it flows out of an instinctive need to evolve. We belong to an unfinished species. We have limitless capacities for growth; indeed, our uniqueness lies in our ability to steer our own evolution. The destination becomes visible through an enlarged perspective. The greatest adventure within the reach of a sentient species is seeing itself in an expanding relationship.
Ability | Adventure | Curiosity | Evolution | Growth | Need | Relationship |
The true source of cheerfulness is benevolence. The pursuits of mankind are commonly frigid and contemptible, and the mistake comes, at last, to be detected. But virtue is a charm that never fades. The soul that perceptually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.
Benevolence | Cheerfulness | Kindness | Mankind | Mistake | Soul | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
At death, you forget all the limitations of the physical body, and realize how free you are... You exist apart from the mortal body... There is nothing to fear. When death comes, laugh at it. Death is only an experience through which you are meant to learn a great lesson: you cannot die. Our real self, the soul, is immortal. We may sleep for a little while in that change called death, but we can never be destroyed. We exist, and that existence is eternal... Nothing can terminate the eternal consciousness.
Body | Change | Consciousness | Death | Eternal | Existence | Experience | Fear | Lesson | Little | Mortal | Nothing | Self | Soul | Learn |
Men can endure to hear otheres praised only so long as they can… persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.
Ability | Envy | Incredulity | Men |
The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it.
Ability | Friendship |