This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity; to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.
Eternity | Existence | Force | Habit | Imagination | Nothing | Power | Present | Reason | Reflection | Thinking |
Losses are comparative, imagination only makes them of any moment.
What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation, awards respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great? How insufficient are all the riches of the earth without her consent!
Earth | Imagination | Reputation | Respect | Riches | Riches | Respect |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those who promote life do not have life for their purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual incarnation, a bringing into our human existence of something eternal, something that appears to imagination to live in a heaven remote from strife and failure and the devouring jaws of Time.
Beauty | Eternal | Existence | Failure | God | Heaven | Imagination | Life | Life | Mankind | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Time | Truth | Failure | God |
We should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God; we should act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves.
Earnestness | Energy | God |
We should act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves; and we should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God.
Earnestness | Energy | God |
The first and last lesson of Yoga is the attitude of mind and heart. The aim of Yoga is to unite mind, body, spirit. The reward of yoga practice is the conversion of physical energy into mind power. The practices give a definite sense of control and raise the levels of consciousness awareness. These practices are not to be done competitively, to exhibit to one's friends, to expand the ego. While each of us, according to our temperament, must find the best mental approach, it should be one of self-surrender. Quiet, but joyful. Concentrated. Never strained. Outer control of the body is a means of regulating the inner functioning.
Awareness | Body | Consciousness | Control | Ego | Energy | Heart | Lesson | Means | Mind | Power | Practice | Quiet | Reward | Self | Sense | Spirit | Surrender |
He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Cost | Difficulty | Energy | Enough | Labor | Little | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |
Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers without regret. Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems [chiefs], and is written in the hearts of our people. Your dead cease to love you and the homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains, and its sequestered vales.
Dreams | God | Little | Love | Man | Men | People | Regret | Religion | Sacred | Spirit | World | Old |
The surest road to health, say what they will, is never to suppose that we shall be ill. Most of those evils we poor mortals know from doctors and imagination flow.
Health | Imagination | Will |
Dejection and despair lead to defeatism and defeat.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
Hate burns up more energy than anything else, more than hard work, illness or justifiable worry. So when hatred is entering our hearts, let us just put it out, make room for pleasant thoughts instead, save our precious God-given energy for something worthy of it.
By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.
Day | Imagination |
Wisdom is the tears of experience, the bridge of experience and imagination over time. It is the listening heart, the melancholy sigh, the distillation of despair to provide a realistic, if often despondent, view of the world.
Despair | Experience | Heart | Imagination | Listening | Melancholy | Tears | Time | Wisdom | World |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
If you want to be happy, set yourself a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes. Happiness is within you. It comes from doing some certain thing into which you can put all your thought and energy. If you want to be happy, get enthusiastic about something.
Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.
Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |
Love… is the only truly real and lasting experience in life. It is the opposite of fear, the essence of relationships, the core of creativity, the grace of power, an intricate part of who we are. It is the source of happiness, the energy that connects us and that lives within us… It is elusive... We are afraid that we will never have it, that if we find it, we will lose it or take it for granted, fearing it will not last.
Creativity | Energy | Experience | Fear | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Power | Will | Afraid |
Prejudices subsist in people's imagination long after they have been destroyed by their experience.
Experience | Imagination | People |