This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Anyone in a state of seeking can never be happy. Only those who are constantly finding are fulfilled. And finding is not something that happens to us - it is something we do.
Happy |
Alex Comfort, fully Alexander Comfort
In a state of war each sincere citizen feels responsibility to society in the abstract, and none to the people he kills.
Abstract | People | Responsibility | Society | War | Society |
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
We call "happiness" a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.
Character | Good | Man | Merit | Mind | Praise | Respect | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise | Respect |
States require property, but property, even though living beings are included in it, is no part of a state; for a state is not a community of living beings only, but a community of equals, aiming at the best life possible. Now, whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many; forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Good | Government | Life | Life | Little | Means | Men | Practice | Property | Qualities | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |
Democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in the government; for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.
Government | Troubles |
Where there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.
Troubles |
The power by virtue of which Christianity was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathenism of Greece and Rome, lies solely on its pessimism, in the confession that our state is both exceedingly wretched and sinful, while Judaism and heathenism were both optimistic.
Whether we are in a pleasant or painful state depends, ultimately, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness.
If you would keep young and happy, be good; live a high moral life; practice the principles of the brotherhood of man; send out good thoughts to all, and think evil of no man. This is in obedience to the great natural law; to live otherwise is to break this great Divine law. Other things being equal, it is the cleanest, purest minds that live long and are happy. The man who is growing and developing intellectually does not grow old like the man who has stopped advancing, but when ambition, aspirations and ideals halt, old age begins.
Age | Ambition | Brotherhood | Evil | Good | Happy | Ideals | Law | Life | Life | Man | Obedience | Old age | Practice | Principles | Old | Think |
A person who does not know how to use his mind productively will flee from the state of being alone. But when a person has leaned to think, he will greatly appreciate the moments when he is by himself, for then he will be able to utilize those moments for intellectual and spiritual growth. In fact, moments of solitude serve as tests to a person to clarify how thinking-oriented he really is.
When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen can never be, this is really the state called desperation.
Desperation | Man | Wishes |
The human mind turned downwards takes cognizance of the world reported to it by the senses; turned upwards it receives intuitional knowledge and directions from pure intelligence, which is its source and essence... The mind finds itself not merely cognizing and arranging the world reported by the senses but striving to rule it and in fact ruled by it. This is a cruel paradox, for by desiring one thing and fearing another the pseudo-self or ego subordinates itself to the senses and the world they report. Thus it comes to be torn between conflicting passions and subject to the tyranny of events.
Ego | Events | Intelligence | Knowledge | Mind | Paradox | Rule | Self | Tyranny | World |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.
Work |