This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
The best gift an educator can give is to get someone to become self-reflective.
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.
Life | Life | Obligation | Universe |
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.
Friend |
Careers are what people have to get what they want for themselves. In a Vocation you discover your gift. And a Vocation is where your gift meets the crushing needs of the world.
People |
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Humanity is not a gift of nature, it is a spiritual achievement to be earned.
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
Expression of Gratitude to the Lord Almighty at these occassions daily; For gift of Memory at dawn, For the gift of Energy at meal times, and for the gift of Peace at night is called Trikal Sandhya.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions.
World |
The meanness of the earthen vessel which conveys to others the Gospel of treasure, takes nothing from the value of the treasure. A dying hand may sign a deed of gift of incalculable value. A shepherd's boy may point out the way to a philosopher. A beggar may be the bearer of an invaluable present.
There is no prescription for how to practice random kindness. It comes from the heart. Your gift might be to pick up litter in your neighborhood, make an anonymous contribution to a charity, send some cash in an unmarked envelope to make someone experiencing financial stress breathe a little easier, save an animal by bringing it to an animal rescue agency, or get a volunteer position feeding hungry people at a church or shelter. You may want to do all these things, and more. The point is, giving is fun and it doesn't have to be expensive.
Church | Fun | Giving | Little | People | Position | Practice |
As societies have grown more complex, larger, more far-flung, and diverse, the tribe-based gift economy has shrunk in importance, while the trade economy has grown to dominate most aspects of people
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
I am thinking of the Danish sculptor of great fame, Thorvaldsen, who chose to be buried in the midst of his work-not in a cathedral or a cemetery, but in a museum among the monuments of his own making- in the midst of his statuary; and there what he made and what he did with his life surrounds him. He did not theorize upon sculpturing, only, but with his hands and with his creative gift he fashioned those things and he lies there in the midst of his works, as we all shall do someday-and it will not be the theories or the discussions or the speculations or the set of principles or the set of commandments that shall save us. We shall be no better than we are. We are no better than the tithing we pay, no better than the teaching we do, no better than the service we give, no better than the commandments we keep, no better than the lives we live, and we shall have a bright remembrance of these things and we shall, in a sense, lie down in the midst of what we have done when that time comes.
Better | Life | Life | Principles | Service | Theories | Thinking | Time | Will |
The gift that isn't big enough to make a mark, but is too big to leave the possessor in peace. And so they can't be content to be Sunday painters, or poets who write for a few friends, or composers whose handful of delicate little settings of Emily Dickinson can't find a singer. It's a special sort of hell.
I think possibly the final sophistication is the recovery of innocence. Where you really get where you take things rather simply. You can't have the innocence of peasants; you are not a peasant; you can't be one of them. But you have to work awfully hard to recover that with a few additional hot licks, by getting smart, wise. I think the final gift of sophistication would be a kind of innocent, clean view of things
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
Love |
It is mankind's discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation. Without language, what concept have we of past or future as separated from the immediate present? Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel, or what we think? It might be said that until he developed language, man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared, or did not share, with his fellow men and women. But because this greatest gift of all gifts is in daily use, and is smeared, and battered and trivialized by commonplace associations, we too often forget the splendor of which it is capable, and the pleasures that it can give, from the pen of a master.
Discovery | Emotions | Future | Language | Man | Men | Past | Discovery | Truths |
Robert Byrne, fully Robert Leo Byrne
One reason people get divorced is that they run out of gift ideas for each other.