This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
Awareness | Conscience | Destiny | Difficulty | Isolation | Order | Rites | Silence | Solitude | Wisdom | Awareness |
The light of genius is sometimes so resplendent as to make a man walk through life, amid glory and acclamation; but it burns very dimly and low when carried into “the valley of the shadow of death.” But faith is like the evening star, shining into our souls the more brightly, the deeper is the night of death in which they sink.
Death | Faith | Genius | Glory | Life | Life | Light | Man | Wisdom |
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against and not with the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition.
Better | Man | Opposition | Wisdom |
Frugality is good, if liberality be joined with it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses; the last bestowing them to the benefit of others that need. The first without the last begets covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality. Both together make an excellent temper. Happy the place where that is found.
'Mid pleasures and palaces through we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Wisdom |
We do not honor the fathers by going back to the place where they stopped but by going on toward the things their vision foresaw.
What is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in time exactly as - we read - it is folded about what is in place and in number.
William Osler, fully Sir William Osler
Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place . . . The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look — these the patient understands.
Care | Disease | Individual | Wisdom |
The acceptance of truth that joy and sorrow, laughter and tears are not confined to any particular time, place or people, but are universally distributed, should make us more tolerant of and more interested in the lives of others.
Acceptance | Joy | Laughter | People | Sorrow | Tears | Time | Truth | Wisdom |
Edmond Rostand, fully Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand
The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun has been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages.
The sea does not contain all the pearls, the earth does not enclose all the treasures, and the flint-stone does not enclose all the diamonds, since the head of man encloses wisdom.
High theory and mere mind-stimulation are secondary; living itself - in the real world, among people - is the essence... I hereby promise to attempt to be a mensh, a decent, caring human being. Neutrality, noncommitment, indifference have no place in life. To be fully human, we are committed to being caring, sensitive, aggressively compassionate people. Our lives are defined by how we act. We are alive because we perform just and righteous deeds, deeds of gentle loving kindness.
Deeds | Indifference | Kindness | Life | Life | Mind | Neutrality | People | Promise | Wisdom | World | Deeds |
The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!
Earth | Enough | Human race | Man | People | Race | Society | Wisdom |