This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
It is not possible for this nation to be at once politically internationalist and economically isolationist. This is just as insane as asking one Siamese twin to high dive while the other plays piano.
We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity.
Growth | Honor | Lesson | Life | Life | Nature | Resolution | Rest | Serenity | Universe |
People are happiest when they have either accomplished something - however small - that they originally considered a challenge, or when they allow themselves to see a familiar landscape in a new way. People who are generally happy do this all the time. They expose themselves to new experiences, which may or may not produce immediate pleasure or comfort. They often take risks. Unhappy people almost never do.
Miraculous cures seldom occur. Despite their small number, they prove the existence of organic and mental processes that we do not know. They show that certain mystic states, such as that of prayer, have definite effects.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
[Democratic government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Better | Destroy | Existence | Government | Man | Men | Nothing | People | Power | Society | Will | Society | Government |
We are beginning to realize that neither big nor small is beautiful, but the appropriate scale, and that the intelligent meshing of big and small is most beautiful of all.
Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings.
Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
You should remember that though another may have more money, beauty, and brains than you, when it comes to the rarer spiritual values such as charity, self-sacrifice, honor and nobility of heart, you have an equal chance with everyone to be the most beloved and honored of all people.
Beauty | Chance | Charity | Heart | Honor | Money | Nobility | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice |
Those who desire honor from good men, and men who know, are aiming at confirming their own opinion of themselves; they delight in honor, therefore, because they believe in their own goodness on the strength of the judgment of those who speak about them.
Desire | Good | Honor | Judgment | Men | Opinion | Strength |
Wealth obviously is not the good we seek, for the sole purpose it serves is to provide the means for getting something else, pleasure, virtue and honor would have better title to be considered the good for they are to be desired for their account.
Better | Good | Honor | Means | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Title | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth |