This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Know what work you want to do and go after it. The young man who gets ahead must decide for himself what he wishes to do. From his own tastes, his own enthusiasm, how he must get the motive and the inspiration which are to start him on his way to a successful life.
Enthusiasm | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Wishes | Work |
The notion of happiness is so indefinite that although every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and wills. The reason of this is that all the elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances.
Absolute | Circumstances | Experience | Future | Man | Present | Reason | Wills | Wishes | Happiness |
A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart.
When crime wishes to attack innocence, it can always find a pretext for doing so.
It is always more difficult to fight one’s own fallings than the power of an adversary.
Power |
Logic and cold reason are poor weapons to fight fear and distrust. Only faith and generosity can overcome them.
Distrust | Faith | Fear | Generosity | Logic | Reason | Weapons |
A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift.
He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.
Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters... The mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have not nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.
Choice | Circumstances | Conduct | Conformity | Eccentricity | Feelings | Growth | Mind | Nature | Peculiarity | People | Pleasure | Taste | Thought | Wishes | Following | Thought |
He who wishes to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts – against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.
Earthly life is an eternal miracle. In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand. This is the gift given to creative individuals who can identify with the mysteries of life through art. It is a divine gift, this spirit of humanity. It is the fight for light over shadow.
Art | Eternal | Eternity | Grace | Humanity | Life | Life | Light | Spirit |
Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
Why were we able to put hundreds of thousands of troops and support personnel in Saudi Arabia within a few months to fight Saddam Hussein when we are unable to mobilize hundreds of teachers or doctors and nurses and social workers for desperately underserved inner cities and rural areas to fight the tyranny of poverty and ignorance and child neglect and abuse?