This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have lived to know that the great secret of happiness is this; never suffer your energies to stagnate. The old adage of "too many irons in the fire," conveys an abominable lie. You cannot have too many - poker, tongs and all - keep them all going.
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot," to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Existence | Harmony | Life | Life | Little | Success | Universe | Wisdom | Happiness |
Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte
The happiness of every man depends on the harmony between the development of his various faculties and the entire system of circumstances which govern his life.
Circumstances | Harmony | Life | Life | Man | System | Wisdom | Govern | Happiness |
True happiness is exotic; its birthplace is in heaven; unhappiness is of native growth.
Growth | Heaven | Unhappiness | Wisdom | Happiness |
It was the scientists who first made true democracy possible, for not only did they lighten our daily tasks but they made the finest works of art and thought, whose enjoyment was until recently the privilege of the favored classes, accessible to all.
Art | Democracy | Enjoyment | Thought | Wisdom | Art | Privilege |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
The highest attainment, as well as enjoyment of the spiritual life, is to be able at all times and in all things to say "Thy will be done."
When you talk about your troubles, your ailments, your diseases, your hurts, you give longer life to what makes you unhappy. Talking about your grievances merely adds to those grievances. Give recognition only to what you desire. Think and talk only about the good things that add to your enjoyment of your work and life. If you don't talk about your grievances, you'll be delighted to find them disappearing quickly.
Desire | Enjoyment | Good | Life | Life | Talking | Troubles | Wisdom | Work | Think |
How extraordinary is the situation of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without going deeper than our daily life, it is plain we exist for our fellow men, in the first place for those upon whose smiles and welfare our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally but to whose destinies we are bound by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Day | Life | Life | Men | Order | Sympathy | Wisdom | Happiness |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with true greatness, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good.
Good | Greatness | Pain | Rest | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
That person lives in hell who gets what he desires too soon. Whether he finds his happiness in wealth, power, fame or women, or in a combination of all, that happiness will be meaningless if it robs him of his desire. Heaven is a country through which we are permitted to search eagerly and with hope for what we want.
Desire | Fame | Heaven | Hell | Hope | Power | Search | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |