This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tyler Durden, character created by Chuck Palahniuk in "Fight Club"
I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
Courage |
Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey
Coaching is an art that must be learned mostly from experience. In the Inner Game approach, coaching is ‘the facilitation of mobility.’ It is the art of creating an environment through conversation, and a way of being, that facilitates the process by which a person can move toward desired goals in a fulfilling manner. It requires one essential ingredient that cannot be taught: Caring not only for the external results but for the person being coached.
A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen - Dear Anna, -- Between friend and friend, Prose answers every common end; Serves, in a plain and homely way, To express the occurrence of the day; Our health, the weather, and the news, What walks we take, what books we choose, And all the floating thoughts we find Upon the surface of the mind. But when a poet takes the pen, Far more alive than other men, He feels a gentle tingling come Down to his finger and his thumb, Derived from nature's noblest part, The centre of a glowing heart: And this is what the world, who knows No flights above the pitch of prose, His more sublime vagaries slighting, Denominates an itch for writing. No wonder I, who scribble rhyme To catch the triflers of the time, And tell them truths divine and clear, Which, couched in prose, they will not hear; Who laboured hard to allure and draw The loiterers I never saw, Should feel that itching and that tingling With all my purpose intermingling, To your intrinsic merit true, When called to address myself to you. Mysterious are His ways, whose power Brings forth that unexpected hour, When minds, that never met before, Shall meet, unite, and part no more; It is the allotment of the skies, The hand of the Supremely Wise, That guides and governs our affections, And plans and orders our connections: Directs us in our distant road, And marks the bounds of our abode. Thus we were settled when you found us, Peasants and children all around us, Not dreaming of so dear a friend, Deep in the abyss of Silver-End. Thus Martha, even against her will, Perched on the top of yonder hill; And you, though you must needs prefer The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre, Are come from distant Loire, to choose A cottage on the banks of Ouse. This page of Providence quite new, And now just opening to our view, Employs our present thoughts and pains To guess, and spell, what it contains: But day by day, and year by year, Will make the dark enigma clear; And furnish us, perhaps, at last, Like other scenes already past, With proof, that we, and our affairs, Are part of a Jehovah's cares: For God unfolds, by slow degrees, The purport of his deep decrees, Sheds every hour a clearer light In aid of our defective sight; And spreads, at length, before the soul A beautiful and perfect whole, Which busy man's inventive brain Toils to anticipate, in vain. Say, Anna, had you never grown The beauties of a rose full blown, Could you, though luminous your eye, By looking on the bud descry, Or guess, with a prophetic power, The future splendour of the flower? Just so, the Omnipotent, who turns The system of a world's concerns, From mere minutiae can educe Events of most important use, And bid a dawning sky display The blaze of a meridian day. The works of man tend, one and all, As needs they must, from great to small; And vanity absorbs at length The monuments of human strength. But who can tell how vast the plan Which this day's incident began? Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion For our dim-sighted observation; It passed unnoticed, as the bird That cleaves the yielding air unheard, And yet may prove, when understood, A harbinger of endless good. Not that I deem, or mean to call Friendship a blessing cheap or small; But merely to remark, that ours, Like some of nature's sweetest flowers, Rose from a seed of tiny size, That seemed to promise no such prize; A transient visit intervening, And made almost without a meaning, (Hardly the effect of inclination), Produced a friendship, then begun, That has cemented us in one; And placed it in our power to prove, By long fidelity and love, That Solomon has wisely spoken,-- 'A threefold cord is not soon broken.'
Absence | Art | Courage | Life | Life | Love | Power | Receive | Resentment | Right | Smile | Will | Art | Forgive |
William Blackstone, fully Sir William Blackstone
No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
After a child or two, that sort runs to fat, and you find you have married more of her than you bargained for.
Whitney Young, fully Whitney Moore Young, Jr.
The hardest work in the world is being out of work.
Courage |
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
All you've got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you'll find people who are eager to fill your head with information.
Easy contact was made on that fateful day with what obviously turned out to be a heretofore unknown type of UFO. I had hesitated for weeks to turn my cloudbuster pipes toward a "star," as if I had known that some of the blinking lights hanging in the sky were not planets or fixed stars but SPACE machines. With the fading out of the two "stars," the cloudbuster had suddenly changed into a SPACEGUN. From then onward, too, our approach to the problem of space became positive, affirmative, confident in using our carefully screened data.
Courage |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Success is ninety-nine percent mental attitude. It calls for love, joy, optimism, confidence, serenity, poise, faith, courage, cheerfulness, imagination, initiative, tolerance, honesty, humility, patience and enthusiasm.
Courage | Failure | Individual | Present | Success | Failure | Loss |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
You are a bundle of mysteries. Finding and conquering yourself is a lifetime task. There are unplumbed depths in you full of the rich ore of personal discovery. Explore yourself! There is power in you--the power to change yourself and to change the world; the power to create plans, projects, movements for the common good; the power to inspire and serve.
In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
And then there is the thrill of creatively sowing ideas and inspiration into the minds of others. Often our contributions will actually change lives by sharing appreciation, courage, love, and joy. Carry the ideal of being a creative sower, that you are on the side of growth, plenty, peace, and progress. Make it a point to scatter creative seeds every day of your life!
Adventure | Art | Courage | Curiosity | Daring | Day | Dreams | Faith | Flexibility | Grave | Heart | Life | Life | Man | Men | Reading | Safe | Theories | Flexibility | Art | Stamina |
Because I'm a man who works, who knows what a human being is like inside, who knows that every human being has his worth, and who wants the world to be governed by work and not by opinions about work.
Courage | Individual | Truth |
Walt Kelley, fully Walter Crawford "Walt" Kelly, Jr.
Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
Courage | Desire | Gentleness | Need | Will |
The book of Isaiah both appeals to the theological-ideological assumptions and places them in question because the facts on the ground tell otherwise. Thus the book of Isaiah and the larger Jerusalem tradition expose this difficult interface between theological claim and lived reality, a difficult interface that is front and center in the book of Job, a difficult interface that every pastor must face in the form of the theodicy question.
Courage | Failure | Imagination | Poetry | Spirit | Will | Failure | Old |
We now know that human transformation does not happen through didacticism or through excessive certitude, but through the playful entertainment of another scripting of reality that may subvert the old given text and its interpretation and lead to the embrace of an alternative text and its redescription of reality.
Consciousness | Courage | Imagination | Need | Power | Think |