This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Be patient in little things. Learn to bear the every-day trials and annoyances of life quietly and calmly, and then, when unforeseen trouble or calamity comes, your strength will not forsake you. There is much difference between genuine patience and sullen endurance, as between the smile of love, and the malicious gnashing of the teeth.
Calamity | Character | Day | Endurance | Life | Life | Little | Love | Patience | Smile | Strength | Trials | Will | Calamity | Trouble | Learn |
Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor
We humans are here because God wanted to behold God. He created us in His image and gave us free will to behave one way or another, to choose between doing the job of reflecting Him and doing what looks more exciting.
I know of but one remedy against the fear of death that is effectual and that will stand the test of a sick-bed, or of a sound mind - that is, a good life, a clear conscience, an honest heart, and a well-ordered conversation; to carry the thoughts of dying men about us, and so to live before we die as we shall wish we had when we come to it.
Character | Conscience | Conversation | Death | Fear | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Sound | Will |
I believe we are here on earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place... Life is to be lived to its fullest so that death is just another chapter. Memories of our lives, our works and our deeds will continue in others.
Better | Character | Death | Deeds | Earth | Life | Life | Will | World | Deeds |
The pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self - affections as well as appetites - and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision.
Body | Character | Constancy | Fear | Habit | Hope | Power | Self | Soul | Vision | Will |
He, who has no inclination to learn more, will be very apt to think that he knows enough.
Undertake something that is difficult; it will do you good. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
An empty mind is little different from an empty house. It, too, soon decays. Just as muscles die when not used, so the brain is weakened through idleness. It needs relaxation and entertainment. But it also needs exercise. It needs and must have work, or it will wither. It must be lived in.
Character | Entertainment | Idleness | Little | Mind | Will | Work |
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
Character | Humanity | Liberty | Man | Morality | Nature | Rights | Surrender | Will |
Yet it may be asked how a man can be at once free and forced to conform to wills which are not his own. How can the opposing minority be both free and subject to laws to which they have not consented? I answer that the question is badly formulated. The citizen consents to all the laws, even to those that are passed against his will, and even to those which punish him when he dares to break any one of them. The constant will of all the members of the state is the general will; it is through it that they are citizens and are free.
Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than partyline line or public opinion; when the mood of Beethoven or Bach will be the mood of your total existence; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians.
Aliveness | Better | Character | Children | Existence | Freedom | Good | Life | Life | Love | Money | Opinion | Public | Security | Will |
Let the foundation of thy affection be virtue, then make the building as rich and as glorious as thou canst; if the foundation be beauty or wealth, and the building virtue, the foundation is too weak for the building, and it will fall: happy is he, the palace of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honor.
Beauty | Character | Happy | Honor | Riches | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth | Will | Beauty |
Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.