This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Select the lucky and avoid the unlucky. Ill-luck is generally the penalty of folly, and there is no disease so contagious.
Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna af Södermöre, Count of Södermöre
The quality of books in a library is often a cloud of witnesses of the ignorance of the owner.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Beauty and health are the chief sources of happiness.
It doesn't matter what the disease is. There is always room for hope. I'm not going to die because of statistics. I hope you won't either.
Disease | Hope | Statistics |
The greatest baseness of man is the pursuit of glory. But it is also the great mark of his excellence; for whatever possessions he may have on earth, whatever health and essential comfort, he is not satisfied if he has not the esteem of men.
Baseness | Comfort | Earth | Esteem | Excellence | Glory | Health | Man | Men | Possessions |
Nothing is more common than good things; the only question is how to discern them; it is certain that all of them are natural and within our reach and even known by every one. But we do not know how to distinguish them. This is universal. It is not in things extraordinary and strange that excellence of any kind is found. We reach up for it, and we are further away; more often than not we must stoop. The best books are those whose readers think they; could have written them. Nature, which alone is good, is familiar and common throughout.
Books | Distinguish | Excellence | Good | Nature | Nothing | Question | Excellence | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
There is a constant relation between the state of the universe at any instant and the rate of change in the rate at which any part of the universe is changing at that instant, and this relation is man-one, i.e., such that the rate of change in the rate of change is determinate when the state of the universe I given. If the ‘law of causality’ is to be something actually discoverable in the practice of science, the above proposition has a better right to the name than any ‘law of causality’ to be found in the books of philosophers.
Better | Books | Change | Law | Man | Practice | Right | Science | Universe |
There is a difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all his money for health.
Blessings | Health | Man | Money | Superiority |
No company is preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.
Calamity | Death | Disease | Good | Grave | Health | Malice | Misfortune | Nothing | Property | Reputation | Respect | Riches | World | Riches | Respect | Friends |
There is this difference between the two temporal blesses - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest man would gladly part with all his money for health.
Health | Man | Money | Superiority |
He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are
A book can give greater riches than any; other form of recreation but it cannot provide the last answers. They must be found in the loneliness of a man's own mind. Books can help a man be ready for those moments. But neither books nor teachers can provide the answers.
Books | Loneliness | Man | Mind | Recreation | Riches | Riches |
Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either receives.
Taking medicine is often only making a new disease to cure or hide the old one.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
The chief thing you are seeking in this world is happiness; and happiness does not depend upon good health or money or fame, though good health is a large factor. It depends, however, principally on one thing only, your thoughts. If you can't have what you want, be grateful for what you have to be thankful for instead of complaining about the little things that annoy you.