This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John M. Wilson, fully John Moulder Wilson
Let's learn and label properly Disappointment and Discouragement for what they are - two completely different states of mind. Disappointment can be a spur to improvement that will contribute to success. But Discouragement is a mortal enemy that destroys courage and robs one of the will to fight. It is not circumstance that causes Discouragement, but one's own reaction to that circumstance. Everyone must meet Disappointment, many times; it is simply a part of life. When it is met, we may resign ourselves to Discouragement and failure. Or we may recognize each Disappointment as an asset by which we can profit, and take new strength from a lesson learned. The choice is ours, each time, to make.
Character | Choice | Courage | Enemy | Failure | Improvement | Lesson | Life | Life | Mind | Mortal | Strength | Success | Time | Will | Wisdom | Circumstance | Learn |
He that has a "spirit of detail" will do better in life than many who figured beyond him in the university. Such an one is minute and particular. He adjusts trifles; and these trifles compose most of the business and happiness of life. Great events happen seldom, and affect few; trifles happen every moment to everybody; and though one occurrence of them adds little to the happiness or misery of life, yet the sum total of their continual repetition is of the highest consequence.
Better | Business | Character | Events | Life | Life | Little | Spirit | Trifles | Will | Business | Happiness |
It is only in the stillness and simplicity of presence - when we are aware of what we are experiencing, when we are here with it as it unfolds - that we can really appreciate our life and reconnect with the ordinary magic of being alive on this earth... Our life is unsatisfactory only because we are not living it fully, because instead we are pursuing a happiness that is always somewhere else, other than where we are right now.
Character | Earth | Life | Life | Magic | Right | Simplicity | Happiness |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Men exist for the sake of one another.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all the others - his last breath.
Truly with an empty belly no one is in shape for love.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity, Magnanimity, Forgiveness? Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of securing one's self-approval.
Character | Charity | Forgiveness | Hate | Humanity | Impulse | Love | Magnanimity | Necessity | Revenge | Self | Self-approval |
Unless we think of others and do something for them, we miss one of the greatest sources of happiness.
We must be knit together in this work as one man; we must entertain each other in brotherly affection; we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together; always having before our eyes our commission and community as members of the same body.
Body | Character | Commerce | Gentleness | Labor | Man | Meekness | Mourn | Patience | Work | Commerce |
One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures, one Reality, all-comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.
The eye - it cannot choose but see; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where ’er they be, against or with our will.
Alain Pen name of Emile-Auguste Chartier
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.