This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Gerald Brenan, fully Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan
A bad memory is the mother of invention.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
Desperation | Men | Quiet | Resignation |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind.
A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life, the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim.
Excellence | Life | Life | Quiet | Strength | Success | Will | Words |
Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
All hormonal function, including that of the immune system and even allergic responses, occur as a sophisticated memory system handled primarily by our emotional brain. Because learning and memory are emotional-cognitive functions, the neural pattern, imprint, or “structure of knowledge” (to use Piaget’s term) of specific learning events includes in its content the memory patterns of those emotional hormones prominent in the body at the time of that learning.
Body | Events | Knowledge | Learning | Memory | System | Time |
My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind.
Church | Duty | Faith | God | Gratitude | Happy | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Parents | Sense |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
No media project succeeds based on “good news only” because good news does not trigger our alert system. Anything good indicates a safe space, the quiet background against which events can play out. The enculturated mind is cued to respond to the negative as a point of focus, which largely screens out or ignores a quiet stable base, and, because it sharpens and maintains our alert awareness, we actually begin to look for the negative.
Awareness | Events | Focus | Good | Mind | News | Play | Quiet | Safe | Space | System |
Love joins our present with the past and the future... Love is a divine knowledge that enables men to see as much as the gods... Love is a blinding mist that keeps the soul from discerning the secret of existence, so that the heart sees only trembling phantoms of desire among the hills, and hears only echoes of cries from voiceless valleys... Love is the rest of the body in the quiet of the grave, the tranquillity of the soul in the depth of Eternity... And so, all who passed spoke of Love as the image of their hopes and frustrations, leaving it a mystery as before.
Body | Desire | Eternity | Existence | Future | Grave | Heart | Knowledge | Love | Men | Mystery | Past | Present | Quiet | Rest | Soul | Tranquility |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
Madame La Comtesse, Diane de Vobrillac (Marie de Beausacq)
Habit is memory in action.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead as to its own. Such an one can do no deed however small but it is clothed with something of God’s power and authority.
Authority | God | Mind | Nothing | Power | Quiet | Self | Will | God |
Happiness is a kind of emotional resting place of quiet satisfaction with one's life.