This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Advice | Day | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Thought | Friends | Thought |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be a surprise enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation. He was a surgeon and had once been an assistant on the staff of a large hospital. So I once tried to get him to smile by describing to him how he would be unable to lose the habits of camp life when he returned to his former work. On the building site (especially when the supervisor made his tour of inspection) the foreman encouraged us to work faster by shouting: 'Action! Action!' I told my friend, 'One day you will be back in the operating room, performing a big abdominal operation. Suddenly an orderly will rush in announcing the arrival of the senior surgeon by shouting, Action! Action!'
Indispensable | Knowledge | Meaning | Nothing | Search | Wisdom | Words |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
Ability | Accident | Day | Growth | Life | Life | Meaning | Power | Psychology | Television | Time | Will |
One should always seek company of intelligent and the person with purity of thought.
Make the Beloved Lord your friend. Keep Him constantly in your mind; He is the Support of the breath of life.
Relationship | Friends |
O sun, take away their sight; O rays, run after them; clinging to their feet, fasten yourselves upon them, when the strength of their arms is gone.
I surrender my mind to Him; I place my wealth before Him. I totally renounce my selfish ways.
I am a sacrifice to my True Guru. He shall not abandon me; He shall surely carry me across.
Only such a householder who practices restraint in taking care of his family shall acquire family happiness and achieve higher social status.
Remember that the whole thing is just a play and the Lord has assigned to you a part; act well your part; there all your duty ends. He has designed the play and He enjoys it.
The tongue is the armor of heart; it guards one's life. Loud talk, long talks, wild talk, and talk full of anger and hate; all these affect the health of man. Why is silence said to be golden? The silent man has no enemies, though he may not have friends. He has the leisure and the chance to delve within himself and examine his own faults and failings. He has no more inclination to seek them (fault) in others.
Peace | Personality | Will | Happiness |
Things are not so important; the transcendental truth of things is of value.
Laziness |
We should make efforts to acquire right knowledge and refrain from violence.
Diet | Opportunity | Regard | Ugly |
This fire has confused the schemes that are in your mind; it shall blow you from your home, blow you away from everywhere.
Perfection | Practice |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
Little | Reading | Technology | Will | Understand |
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretense at apology, without the homage of a tear.
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the cooler, and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest.