This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A man must first care for his own household before he can be of use to the state. But no matter how well he cares for his household, he is not a good citizen unless he also takes thought of the state. In the same way, a great nation must think of its own internal affairs; and yet it cannot substantiate its claim to be a great nation unless it also thinks of its position in the world at large.
Desire | Effort | Freedom | Good | Honor | Labor | Leisure | Life | Life | Little | Man | Means | Necessity | Need | Nothing | Peace | Politics | Power | Present | Qualities | Teach | Will | Work | Worth |
We should be treated with great respect, great affection and compassion. It is very important to treat our bodies with the utmost respect, with understanding, with compassion. If you know how to treat your body and your feelings with such respect, you will also be able to treat another person with the same respect and that is how we build peace.
Leisure | Meditation | Need | Practice | Will |
So long as I was in your sight I was your heart, your soul, your treasure; And evermore you sobb’d and sigh’d Burning in flames beyond all measure: –Three days endured your love to me, And it was lost in other three!
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune.
Aims | Attainment | Childhood | Happy | Leisure | Life | Life | Little | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Rule | Will | Work | Happiness |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Hence, as the line of sight to the upper part is the longer, it makes that part look as if it were leaning back. But when the members are inclined to the front, as described above, they will seem the beholder to be plumb and perpendicular.
All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses— the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that someday the path may be established more directly?
Conservation | Defense | Knowledge | Learning | Leisure | Man | Means | Objectives | Position | Science | Will | World | Leadership |
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.
Birth | Body | Consequences | Culture | Deference | Distinction | Example | Force | Indulgence | Leisure | Lesson | Men | Office | Practice | Regard | Regulation | Respect | Speech | Respect | Vice |
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognized as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for noble or gentle. It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practice the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants.
Conspicuous consumption | Good | Leisure | Means |
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
Consequences | Leisure | Life | Life |
Chögyam Trungpa, fully Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Appreciating sacredness begins very simply by taking an interest in all the details of your life.
Leisure |
Dawn talks to day over dew-gleaming flowers, night flies away
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day.