This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth
We are to live with life and die with death, not separated from them. The problem of suffering is insoluble, because we think of ourselves as apart from pain and death, in opposition to them. We can be free from change only by changing with it.
Change | Death | Life | Life | Opposition | Pain | Suffering | Wisdom | Think |
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
Of all suffering from fortune, the unhappiest misfortune is to have known a happy fortune.
Fortune | Happy | Misfortune | Suffering | Wisdom | Misfortune |
The three foundations of learning: Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much.
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words.
Crime | Cruelty | Deference | Devotion | Enthusiasm | Feelings | Indignation | Little | Nothing | Oppression | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Words |
We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.
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.
The hold which comptrollers of money are able to maintain on productive forces is seen to be more powerful when it is remembered that, although money is supposed to represent the real wealth of the world, there is always much more wealth that there is money, and real wealth is often compelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that most paradoxical situation - a world filled with wealth but suffering want.
Ulysses S. Grant, fully Ulysses Simpson Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant
Too long denial of guaranteed right is sure to lead to revolution - bloody revolution, where suffering must fall upon the innocent as well as the guilty.
Revolution | Right | Suffering | Wisdom |
Edward Hoagland, fully Edward Morley Hoagland
Any careful study of living things, whether wolves, bears or man, reminds one of the same direct truth; also of the clarity of the fact that evolution itself is obviously not some process of drowning being clutching at straws and climbing from suffering and trail and virtual expiration to tenuous, momentary survival. Rather, evolution has been a matter of days well-lived, chameleon strength, energy, zappy sex, sunshine stored up, inventiveness, competitiveness, and the whole fun of busy brain cells.
Energy | Evolution | Fun | Man | Strength | Study | Suffering | Survival | Truth | Wisdom |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the 'thorn in the flesh' is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.
Defects | Imperfection | Life | Life | Light | Perfection | Progress | Suffering | Wholeness | Wisdom |