This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
People are happiest when they have either accomplished something - however small - that they originally considered a challenge, or when they allow themselves to see a familiar landscape in a new way. People who are generally happy do this all the time. They expose themselves to new experiences, which may or may not produce immediate pleasure or comfort. They often take risks. Unhappy people almost never do.
Miraculous cures seldom occur. Despite their small number, they prove the existence of organic and mental processes that we do not know. They show that certain mystic states, such as that of prayer, have definite effects.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
[Democratic government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Better | Destroy | Existence | Government | Man | Men | Nothing | People | Power | Society | Will | Society | Government |
We are beginning to realize that neither big nor small is beautiful, but the appropriate scale, and that the intelligent meshing of big and small is most beautiful of all.
Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings.
Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
Only a small mind traffics in scorn; a mind whose truth accords no place to others’. But we who knew that different truths can coexist thought not that we were lowering ourselves by countenancing another’s truth, unpalatable though it might seem.
The man who has been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it as something without which he could no more live than he could live without air; he guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and economical. But the man who has been born into a poor position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Chance | Fortune | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Order | Position | Wealth |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Theology is an incubus that a humanist can never shake off. He may seek refuge from theism in atheism or from animism in materialism. But after each desperate twist and turn he will find himself committed to some theological position or other. Theology is inescapable, and it is dynamite.
Atheism | Materialism | Position | Theology | Will |
When Abraham Lincoln was a young man he ran for the Legislature in Illinois and was badly swamped. Next he entered business, failed and spent seventeen years of his life paying up the debts of a worthless partner. He was in love with a beautiful young woman to whom he became engagedand then, she died. Later he married a woman who was a constant burden to him. Entering politics again, he was badly defeated for Congress. He failed to get an appointment to the U.S. Land Office. He was badly defeated for the U.S. Senate. In 1856 he became a candidate for the Vice-Presidency and was again defeated. In 1858 he was defeated by Douglas. One failure after another, bad failures, great setbacks. In the face of all this he eventually became one of the country's greatest men, if not the greatest. When you think of a series of setbacks like this, doesn't it make you feel small to become discouraged, just because you think that you're having a hard time in life?
Business | Failure | Land | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Office | Politics | Time | Woman | Failure | Think |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. but when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Genius | Greatness | Men | Reason | Size | Time | Wishes | World | Intellect |
If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence, and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems ! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How e laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.
Comedy | Existence | Life | Life | Little | Men | Space | Struggle | World |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life, is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle. It is by what we do ourselves that we learn.
Birth | Cause | Children | Death | Effort | Experience | Force | Life | Life | Mistake | Success | Learn |