This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The desire of a man for a woman is not directed at her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman. That she is a human being is of no concern to him.
When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.
Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire uttered and expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God are near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, prayer, the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.
A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
The serene decision of the tombs is beautiful, their uncompromising architecture and the little squares with the coolness of a patio and the isolation and eternal individuation; each contemplated his own death, unique and personal like a memory. The quietude pleases us, we confuse such peace in life with dying and while we believe we desire not to be , we are praying for a peaceful life.
Death | Decision | Desire | Eternal | Isolation | Life | Life | Little | Memory | Peace | Unique |
You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects the alchemist ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man's mind, body or fortune, it makes him easy under them.
Body | Contentment | Desire | Fortune | Man | Mind | Riches |
Few people have ever tried seriously to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional forms and ceremonies.
Desire | Good | Grace | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | People |
Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
Consider the postage stamp my son: Its usefulness consists in its ability to stick to one thing until it gets there
Ability | Usefulness |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Force is only a desire for flight: it lives by violence and dies from liberty.
All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.
Contentment | Desire | Knowing |
Love joins our present with the past and the future... Love is a divine knowledge that enables men to see as much as the gods... Love is a blinding mist that keeps the soul from discerning the secret of existence, so that the heart sees only trembling phantoms of desire among the hills, and hears only echoes of cries from voiceless valleys... Love is the rest of the body in the quiet of the grave, the tranquillity of the soul in the depth of Eternity... And so, all who passed spoke of Love as the image of their hopes and frustrations, leaving it a mystery as before.
Body | Desire | Eternity | Existence | Future | Grave | Heart | Knowledge | Love | Men | Mystery | Past | Present | Quiet | Rest | Soul | Tranquility |
We are a spectacular manifestation of life. We have language... We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a "common goal" of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Those who desire to be men in truth, not brutes in the appearance of men, must constantly endeavor to reduce the wants of the body.