This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Scott Adams, fully Scott Raymond Adams
Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
Kindness |
It may be that true happiness lies in the conviction that one has irremediably lost happiness. Then we can begin to move through life without hope or fear, capable of finally enlying all the small pleasures, which are the most lasting.
William Barrett, fully William Christopher Barrett
Man occupies a middle position in the universe, between the infinitesimal and the infinite: he is an All in the relation to Nothingness, a Nothingness in relation to the All. This middle position of man is the final and dominant fact of the human condition… It is also a perfect image of the finitude of human existence… Man is his finitude.
Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL
When you find wealth within your reach, do not try to get it by improper means; when you meet with calamity, do not (try to) escape from it by improper means. Do not seek for victory in small contentions; do not seek for more than your proper share. Do not positively affirm what you have doubts about; and (when you have no doubts) do not let what you say appear (simply) as your own view.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
We can exist only in progress toward another world; we are not fixed in a permanent position within a crude and self-sufficient universe; we dwell in the midst of mystery.
Modern mental hospitals, where every method of control has been euphemistically renamed, can be frightening places. The actions of every staff member – the aide who holds a patient down, the nurse who injects the medication, the doctor who prescribes it – all have been defined as benevolent. Patients who dare to utter the unauthorized reality – that they are prisoners and that their “helpers” are jailers – only provide further evidence that they are indeed ill. Succumbing to brainwashing, accepting reality as defined by one’s captors, differs from a psychiatric “cure” only because in the latter case the accepted reality is the prevailing one. Holding a minority position makes a person a potential subject for psychiatric brainwashing.
It is a man listening through a tornado for the Still Small Voice… a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the Universe… a hungry heart seeking for love… Time flowing into Eternity… IT is a man climbing the altar stairs to God.
Awe | Eternity | God | Heart | Listening | Love | Man | Mystery | Soul | Time | Universe |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
In order to live we must decide on one course of action rather than another, moment by moment. We declare our values and take our stands in both small ways and large. Were we to admit that we are never certain that we have chosen correctly, and never reassured that this chosen course was the correct course of action, then we would be open to the unending exploration and revision in our way of living. We would have learned to put our prejudices and assumptions, our convictions and beliefs at risk.
Action | Convictions | Order | Risk |
Luis Buñuel, fully Luis Buñuel Portolés
In any society, the artist has a responsibility. Their effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is very important.
Change | Important | Responsibility | Society | World |
The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love. We can never really love anybody with whom we never laugh. Love is in the giver, not the gift. He told me that once he forgot himself and opened up like a door with a loose latch and everything fell out and he tried for days to put it all back in the proper order, but he finally gave up and left if there in a pile and loved everything equally.
Is there a spiritual reality, inconceivable to us today, which corresponds in history to the physical reality which Einstein discovered and which led to the atomic bomb? Einstein discovered a law of physical change: the way to convert a single particle of matter into enormous physical energy. Might there not also be, as Gandhi suggested, an equally incredible and [as yet] undiscovered law of spiritual change, whereby a single person or small community of persons could be converted into an enormous spiritual energy capable of transforming a society and a world?
Atomic bomb | Change | Energy | History | Law | Reality | Society | World | Society |
You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
John Earle, Bishop of Salisbury
A child is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve, or the Apple... He is Nature’s fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred notebook. He is purely happy because he knows no evil.
Most people return small Favors, acknowledge middling ones, and repay great ones with Ingratitude.
Ingratitude | People |
Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
Don't be afraid to take one large step because you can't cross a chasm in two small leaps.
Afraid |