This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.
Battle | Birth | Children | History | Imagination | Life | Life | Longing | Majority | Meaning | Men | Nothing | Talking | Thought | Will | Old | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There is nothing staid, nothing settled, in this universe. All is ripling, all is dancing; all is quickness and triumph.
Experiment | Knowledge | Meaning | Friends |
Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.
Agony | Conscience | Deeds | Judgment | Soul | Truth | Deeds |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What is this terror? What is this ecstasy, he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.
Little | Meaning | Revelation |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer.
Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray of a dawning morning in Bavaria. "Et lux in tenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The noise of rifles and cannons woke us; the flashes of tracer bullets and gun shots entered the hut. The chief doctor dashed in and ordered us to take cover on the floor. One prisoner jumped on my stomach from the bed above me and with his shoes on. That awakened me all right! Then we grasped what was happening: the battle-front had reached us! The shooting decreased and morning dawned. Outside on the pole at the camp gate a white flag floated in the wind.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.
Belief | Love | Man | Meaning | Poetry | Salvation | Thought | Thought |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logotherapy? he asked. At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logotherapy? Yes, I said, but in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is? This was his answer: During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell. Whereupon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation: Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear.
Cause | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Reason | World |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.'
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I made a quick last round of my patients [just before I intended to escape], who were lying huddled on the rotten planks of wood on either side of the huts. I came to my only countryman, who was almost dying, and whose life it had been my ambition to save in spite of his condition. I had to keep my intention to escape to myself, but my comrade seemed to guess that something was wrong (perhaps I showed a little nervousness). In a tired voice he asked me, 'You, too, are getting out?' I denied it, but I found it difficult to avoid his sad look. After my round I returned to him. Again a hopeless look greeted me and somehow I felt it to be an accusation. The unpleasant feeling that had gripped me as soon as I had told my friend I would escape with him became more intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my own hands for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with finality that I had made up my mind to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling left me. I did not know what the following days would bring, but I had gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. I returned to the hut, sat down on the boards at my countryman's feet and tried to comfort him; then I chatted with the others, trying to quiet them in their delirium.
Example | Extreme | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Thought | Writing | Thought |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau… When we arrived the first important news that we heard from older prisoners was that this comparatively small camp… had no 'oven,' no crematorium, no gas!... This joyful surprise put us all in a good mood... We laughed and cracked jokes in spite of, and during, all we had to go through in the next few hours.
Change | Discovery | Indispensable | Meaning | Suffering | Discovery |