This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Present suffering is not enjoyable, but life would be worth little without it... Though the aspect of suffering is hard, the prospect is hopeful, and the retrospect will start a song, if we are “the called according to his purpose,” in suffering.
Life | Life | Little | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Will | Worth |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The altogether courageous and great spirit has, above all, two characteristics. First, he is indifferent to outward circumstances. Such a person is convinced that nothing but moral goodness and propriety are worth admiring and striving for. He knows he ought not be subject to any person, passion, or accident of fortune. His second characteristic is that when his soul has been disciplined in this way, he should do things that are not only great and highly useful, but also deeds that are arduous, laborious and fraught with danger to life and to those things that make life worthwhile.
Accident | Circumstances | Danger | Deeds | Fortune | Life | Life | Nothing | Passion | Soul | Spirit | Worth | Deeds | Danger |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
The root of honesty is an honest intention, the distinct and deliberate purpose to be true, to handle facts as they are, and not as we wish them to be. Facts lend themselves to manipulation. Many a butcher’s hand is worth more than its weight in gold. What we want things to be, we come to see them to be; and the tailor pulls the coat and the truth into a perfect fit from his point of view.
Gold | Honesty | Intention | Purpose | Purpose | Truth | Worth |
Malcolm S. Forbes, fully Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Sr.
One's real worth is never a quantifiable thing.
Worth |
Twelve Things to Remember: The value of time. The success of perseverance. The pleasure of working. The dignity of simplicity. The worth of character. The power of kindness. The influence of example. The obligation of duty. The wisdom of economy. The virtue of patience. The improvement of talent. The joy of originating.
Character | Dignity | Duty | Example | Improvement | Influence | Joy | Kindness | Obligation | Patience | Perseverance | Pleasure | Power | Simplicity | Success | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Worth | Value |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
From the point of view of an individual, it does not matter what the ultimate goal is - provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime's worth of psychic energy... As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person's life.
Action | Energy | Enough | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Objectives | Order | Worth |
It is the appreciation of beauty and truth, the striving for knowledge, which makes life worth living.
Appreciation | Beauty | Knowledge | Life | Life | Truth | Worth | Appreciation | Beauty |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
It is worth remembering - particularly since it has been so uniformly suppressed - that the U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law.
Self-control is not worth a farthing unless we build up a great self worth controlling.
Control | Self | Self-control | Worth |
Let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious, to follow out one's daydream to its natural consummation, although if the vision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure.
Perhaps the quintessential symbol of society’s anomalies is the neutron bomb. The distinctive feature of this weapon is that it will expunge life but spare property. It does, however, have this virtue: it is an open autobiographical statement. It is a confession of values. It identifies the hierarchy of things society believes are worth saving: the inanimate ahead of the animate, property ahead of people.
Life | Life | People | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Worth | Society |
The way a book is read - which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book - can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts in it. Anyone who can read, can learn to read deeply and thus live more fully.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.
Man is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to affirm the worth of an end, is to create an ideal.
Consider! Behind you lie the confusions and inadequacies of that remarkably over-rated period of human existence known as youth. Youth has vitality, its true; youth has a superabundance of “free energy.” But it has little else. It lacks poise. It lacks experience. Above all, it has neither judgment nor wisdom, the two qualities which make life supremely worth while... the rewards of self-knowledge are enormous... self-knowledge is the key to self-mastery... Calm, assured, integrated people have a way of making considerable impact on reality. By changing themselves, they change the world around them.
Change | Energy | Existence | Experience | Judgment | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | People | Qualities | Reality | Self | Self-knowledge | Self-mastery | Wisdom | World | Worth | Youth | Youth |
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.
Better | Humanity | Looks | Progress | Utopia | World | Worth |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Life is worth nothing if it is not a continuous overcoming of problems. Each problem that waits for a solution at your hand is a religious duty imposed upon you by life itself. Any escape from problems, physical or mental, is an escape from life, as there can be no life that is not full of problems.