This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Remember, the world is filled with people who do not know who they are, who spend their lives telling other people who they are.
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God. True philosophy turns aside from religions, and pushes forward to religion.
Difficulty | Life | Life | Man |
The universe contains what is necessary and only what is necessary. (II.3.iii)
Difficulty | Liberty | Work |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.
The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also to be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled by a few.
Ability | Difficulty | Experience | Important | Means | Present |
If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Few people have enough background to suffer for the truth and say.
Difficulty | Enough | People |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.
Difficulty | Family |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document: it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age
Boldness | Business | Difficulty | Law | Business |
Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do.
Abstract | Common Sense | Difficulty | Discussion | Duty | Imagination | Pacifism | Rationality | Reason | Sense | Utopia | Think |
A man of wit would often be much embarrassed without the company of fools.
Difficulty | Man | Understanding |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you.
Beginning | Difficulty |
The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven.
Balance | Darkness | Difficulty | Light | Madness | Present |
God is fully present here with me, now. God is the only real Presence, all the rest is but a shadow. God is perfect Good, and God is the cause only of perfect Good. The same fountain cannot send forth both sweet and bitter water. God never sends sickness, trouble, accident, temptation, nor death itself; nor does He authorize these things. I am divine spirit. I am a child of God. In God I live and move and have my being; so I do not fear. I am surrounded by the Presence of God and all is well. I am not afraid of the past; I am not afraid of the present; I am not afraid of the future; for God is with me. The Eternal God is my dwelling place and underneath are the everlasting arms. Nothing can touch me but the direct action of God Himself, and God is Love.
Prayer is the only real action in the full sense of the word, because prayer is the only thing that changes one's character. A change in character, or a change in soul, is a real change. When that kind of change takes place, you become a different person and, therefore, for the rest of your life you act in a different way from the way in which you have previously acted, and in which you would have continued to act had you not prayed. In other words, you become a different person. The amount of difference may be only very slight for each time that you pray: nevertheless it is there, for you cannot pray without making yourself different in some degree.
Difficulty | Prayer | Time | Will |
There is no need to be unhappy. There is no need to be sad. There is no need to be disappointed, or oppressed, or aggrieved. There is no need for illness or failure or discouragement. There is no necessity for anything but success, good health, prosperity, and an abounding interest and joy in life.
Refuse to tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free, joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly and firmly for the port that you intend to make.
Ability | Absolute | Acquaintance | Action | Attention | Delay | Difficulty | Faith | God | Harmony | Man | Means | Mind | Need | Peace | Power | Prayer | Quiet | Struggle | Time | Truth | Will | Trial | God | Child | Think |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
The age demanded that we dance, and jammed us into iron pants. And in the end the age was handed the sort of shit that it demanded.
Difficulty | Good | People |
Your question is already answered by the fact that I made you take a test. You have now reached a stage where teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. You can separate from me any time you wish. Even if broad seas lie between us, I shall always be with you when you practice what you have learned. I need not ask you to keep up your regular practicing, not to discontinue it on any pretext whatsoever, and to let no day go by without your performing the ceremony, even without bow and arrow, or at least without having breathed properly. I need not ask you because I know that you can never give up this spiritual archery. Do not ever write to me about it, but send me photographs from time to time so that I can see how you draw the bow. Then I shall know everything I need to know.
Choice | Difficulty | Right | Will |