This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.
Bad books are like intoxicating drinks; they furnish neither nourishment, nor medicine. Both improperly excite; the one the mind; the other by body. The desire for each increases by being fed. Both ruin; one the intellect; the other the health; and together, the soul. The safeguard against each is the same - total abstinence from all that intoxicates either body or mind.
Abstinence | Body | Books | Desire | Health | Mind | Soul | Wisdom |
In the first place, the human mind, no matter how highly trained, is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many tongues. The little child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind to God. And because I believe this, I am not an atheist.
Books | God | Little | Mind | Order | Plan | Universe | Wisdom | Child | Understand |
How do drugs, hygiene, and animal magnetism heal? It may be affirmed that they do not heal, but only relieve suffering temporarily, exchanging one disease for another.
Think as well as read, and when you read. Yield not your minds to the passive impressions which others may make upon them. Hear what they have to say; but examine it, weight it, and judge for yourselves. This will enable you to make a right use of books - to use them as helpers, not as guides to your understanding; as counselors, not as dictators of what you are to think and believe.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders... It is s species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals.
Family | Health | Idleness | Labor | Madness | Man | Men | Risk | Wisdom |
Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness.
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
We live too much in books and not enough in nature, and we are very much like the simpleton of a Pliny the Younger, who went on studying a Greek author while before his eyes Vesuvius was overwhelming five cities beneath the ashes.
To have health of body, it is necessarie to have contentment of minde.
Body | Contentment | Health | Wisdom |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
I have ever gained the most profit, and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections.
Books | Memory | Pleasure | Understanding | Wisdom | Think |
There is no separation between a patient’s neurobiology, spiritual life, life perspectives, and quality of life force. Words, and spiritual/therapeutic interventions can tangibly affect a patient’s neurochemistry and physical health just as assuredly as psycho-pharmacological drugs can tangibly affect a patient’s feelings and thoughts... I have found that working with the meaning of a patient’s illness can profoundly alter not only the prognosis but can influence and give meaning to all other aspects of a patient’s life. Depression, for example, is often a direct communication from the soul that one’s belief system is not working... It is all too easy, and part of the human condition, to be misled by our lower half into believing that the sensory world is all that’s real.
Belief | Depression | Example | Feelings | Force | Health | Influence | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul | System | Wisdom | Words | World |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Books | Ecstasy | Good | People | Reading | Remorse | Sorrow | Will | Wisdom |