This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Lenin was a Great Russian peasant et rien de plus, mais r-r-rien de plus. Oh yes, he was a dialectician, the only true one among them. But most of all he was a Russian and that is to be a peasant.
Compassion | Humility |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
While there is life there is hope, has deeper meaning in reverse. While there is hope there is life. Hope comes first, life follows. Hope gives power to life. Hope rouses life to continue to expand, to grow, to reach out, to go on. Hope sees a light where there isn't any. Hope lights candles in millions of despairing hearts. Where would I be without hope?
Compassion | Freedom | Love | Order | Peace | People | Universe | Happiness |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision.
Compassion | Determination | Spirit | Think |
Others, who have the common amount of charity and have not yet grown in grace to this extent, but are guided by their own reason, struggle and strive all day against their sins in order to acquire virtues. Like wrestlers, they are sometimes on top, and sometimes underneath. Such people are doing well. They acquire virtues through their own reason and will, but not because they love and delight in virtue, for they have to exert all of their energy to overcome their natural instincts in order to possess them. Consequently they never enjoy true peace or final victory. They will receive a great reward, but they are not yet sufficiently humble. They have not yet put themselves wholly into God's hands, because they do not yet see Him.
What is most pleasing to God is to have the soul become by His Grace what the Source is by nature, and this is achieved through Spiritual contemplation and Love of Him. This must be the aim of all who Love God. So whenever you feel your soul moved by Grace, especially in the way I have described by the opening of your Spiritual eyes, you may be sure that you are experiencing God. Hold fast to Him, try and retain this Grace, and do not easily let Him go. Seek God alone for itself, and cooperate with Its Grace with increasing devotion so it may grow within you more and more. Therefore surrender yourself with this experience when Grace draws you and maintain it with Love and delight in order that you may gradually reach a fuller and better knowledge of God; for Grace Itself will always direct you if you yield to its guidance until you reach your end.
Humility |
A press monopoly is incompatible with a free press; and one can proceed with this principle: if there is a monopoly of the means of communications - of radio, television, magazines, books, public meetings - it follows that the society is by definition and in fact deprived of freedom.
Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.
Compassion | Good | Nothing |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Heaven on Earth is a choice you must make, not a place we must find.
Better | Compassion | Energy | Good | People |
We don't have the wisdom required to hear what is truly necessary to hear right action, right understanding, right livelihood. We inadvertently break things even as we try to fix them. Our busy-ness becomes a kind of violence because it destroys the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. On one level, suffering comes because we inadvertently bring harm to the world that we're trying to help whether we're raising money to pay the bills, serving the homeless, or feeding the hungry. Having been in non-profit worlds for twenty-five years, I can say that the faster we go, the more we unintentionally mishandle the ones we love. They become an object of our ambition rather than the subject of our heart's attention, which requires a certain amount of time and company as well as money.
Compassion | Freedom | Need |
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
Compassion | Enough | Imagination | Kill | Knowledge | People | Power | Old |
We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them.
Ability | Arrogance | Behavior | Capacity | Change | Creativity | Danger | Doubt | Effort | Error | Good | Greed | Humility | Life | Life | Pride | Reverence | Sense | Will | World | Danger | Learn | Understand |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
The key statement about anyone's life is the redemption of the manifestation, through depth understanding that bypasses social conditioning, spiritual materialism, defenses and preferences.
W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith
The belief, the try, a camera and some film - the fragile weapons of my good intentions. With these I fought war.
Compassion | Enough | Important | Rest | Right | Sense | Understanding |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
Morally, the life of the organization must be of exemplary nature. This is one phase where the organization must not have criticism.
Greatness | Humility | Meekness | Qualities | Simplicity |
Keeping the Body and Brain Sensitive, Alert and Sharp - It is necessary to keep the body sensitive, alert and sharp, to feed it and to clothe it correctly, properly; to give it a chance to go through exercises which will mobilize not only the muscles, but also the nerves and be careful that the body does not become sluggish; to feed it correctly - not over- nor under-feeding it; to allow it to have sleep, necessary for its health - not to over- nor under-sleep; not to expose it to too much brooding, worrying, anxiety, which are impotent ways of wasting energy; not entering into excesses of indulgence and not denying and suppressing in the name of austerity, religion or discipline; because the cerebral organ, the brain is woven into this biological structure. It is very important, because in a sluggish body, in a lazy body, you can't have a sharp, sensitive, alert brain, which would voluntarily go into non-action. Self-education is vitally necessary in order to enable the cerebral organ to function in an orderly, quiet way. When there is order, there is a quietness; an orderly person hardly gets excited. It is disorder that leads to excitement, enthusiasm, depression which is the other side of excitement, passivity which is the obverse of enthusiasm. When one has arrived at that orderliness in daily living, in whatever one does, then only one can talk about the brain voluntarily, relinquishing the outgoing and the ingoing movement, relinquishing voluntarily the hold upon the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible, so that the infinite could be.
Compassion | Discovery | Dynamic | Oneness | People | Society | Will | Society | Discovery |
But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves.
Behavior | Change | Compassion | Design | Focus | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Motives | Need | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rest | Society | System | Will | Society |
Correct diet implies the right quality and quantity as well as the frequency of intake. Eating should be related to appetite. It should not cause any excitement, or emotional disturbance. It should be gone through peacefully and happily. One has to be very alert to see that everything one eats is fully digested. The body should not be burdened with undigested food. The cleanliness of all the internal organs is one of the most important factors of meditation.
Compassion | Decision | Force | Life | Life | Strength | Wholeness |
Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love. Compassion cannot be cultivated; it derives neither from intellectual conviction nor from emotional reaction. It is simply there when the wholeness of life becomes a fact that is truly lived.
Absolute | Compassion | Life | Life | Nothing | Oneness | Principles | Reality | Will |
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes. - The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives - all bear secret relations to our destinies.
Abuse | Destiny | Ends | Example | Family | Future | Glory | Humility | Nothing | Search | Silence | Thought | Following | Old | Thought |