This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Live boldly. Laugh Loudly. Love Truly. Play as often as you can Work as smart as you are able. Share your heart as deeply as you can reach.
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly — but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.
Reason |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
When we find ourselves fading into shadows and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be sad, but rather to laugh as gaily as we may, and ask little reason wherefore.
It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times—to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men’s books! We laugh at Dead Men’s jokes, and cry at Dead Men’s pathos! . . . Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man’s icy hand obstructs us!
It will help us and our children if we can laugh at our faults. It will help us tolerate our shortcomings, and it will help our children see that the goal is to be a human, not perfect.
Niels Bohr, fully Neils Henrik David Bohr
If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.
Niels Bohr, fully Neils Henrik David Bohr
There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, the writer celebrated in other ways but very little in mathematics, spoke somewhat childishly of the shape of the earth when he derided those who declared the earth had the shape of a ball. So it ought not to surprise students if such should laugh at us also. Mathematics is written for mathematicians to whom these our labors, if I am not mistaken, will appear to contribute something even to the ecclesiastical state the headship of which your Holiness now occupies
Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Life has not to be taken as a problem; it is not. It has to be taken as a gift, a tremendously valuable gift from God. Life has not to be taken as a burden but as a dance. One need not drag oneself. We can dance the whole way, we can laugh the whole way, and we can love the whole way. Life is meant to be a miracle, but it depends: if we choose misery, life becomes misery. Life is very obliging: if you choose misery it becomes misery, if you choose darkness it becomes darkness. It is so obliging, whatsoever you choose it becomes that for you. If you choose bliss it becomes bliss, if you choose God it becomes God. It depends on you. People go on choosing wrong things, and then they make life responsible. In fact they are responsible: whatsoever happens, happens because they have willed it so. Knowingly, unknowingly, consciously, unconsciously, they have willed it so. It happens only when somehow, somewhere, in your being, you have willed it
Who can not laugh at life - and its trends fallible - and Fortune, the fickle whore, always carried in his heart, seeing the anguish that goes to the people most miserable.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
People have different professions, different points of view. They are like observers looking at the world through the narrow windows of an otherwise closed structure. Occasionally they assemble at the center and discuss what they have seen; then one observer will talk about a beautiful landscape with red trees, a red sky, and a red lake in the middle; the next one about an infinite blue plane without articulation; and the third about an impressive, five-floor-high building; they will quarrel. The observer on top of the structure (me) can only laugh at their quarrels-but for them the quarrels will be real and he (the observer on top) will be an unworldly dreamer. Real life... is exactly like that. Every person has his own well-defined opinions, which color the section of the world he perceives. And when people come together, when they try to discover the nature of the whole which they belong, they are bound to talk past each other; they will understand neither themselves nor their companions.
Life attracts life… Life can seem either very long or very short, according to how you live it… Life does not play with marked cards. Winning or losing is part of it… Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once… Life is a constant risk, and anyone who forgets this will be unprepared for the challenges that fate may have in store… Life is a game that is spinning faster to dizziness; life is a skydiving game; it gives us the opportunity, we flying and soaring up again; life is a hiking trip; it wants to climb to the pinnacle of your best and feeling angry, upset when you do not control it… Life is an act of faith… Life is falling down 7 times and getting up 8… Life is like a garden, you reap what you sow… Life is like cooking: before choosing what you love, try everything… Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by… Life is one long training session, in preparation for what will come. Life and death lose their meaning, there are only challenges to be met with joy and overcome with tranquility… Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly… Life is too short to waste time complaining… Life is the moment we're living right now… Life sometimes separates people so that they can realize how much they mean to each other… Life without cause is a life without effect.
Action | Cause | Control | Death | Fate | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | People | Play | Reason | Right | Time | Training | Wants | Waste | Will | Fate | Forgive | Winning |
At that moment it seemed to him that time stood still and the soul of the world surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke. The language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen. The omen he had been awaiting without even knowing he was for all his life. The omen he sought to find in his sheep and in his books. In the crystals and in the silence of the desert… It was the pure language of the world. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life. And that, with no need for words she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it, than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way never learned the universal language. Because when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you. Whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love and makes a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.
Dreams | Earth | Force | Future | Important | Knowing | Language | Love | Need | Parents | Past | People | Silence | Soul | Time | Understanding | Universe | Woman | Words | World | Understand |
Don't be like those people who believe in positive thinking and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything; it's merely a question of believing… Don't explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you… Don't think about what you'll tell people afterward. The time is here and now. Make the most of it… Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.
Better | Doubt | Evolution | Need | People | Question | Thinking | Time | Waste | Will | Friends | Think |
I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.