This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He that defers his charity until he is dead is, if a man weighs it rightly, rather liberal of another man’s good than his own.
The saint… is one who succeeds in giving us at least a glimpse of eternity, despite the thick opacity of time.
Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
When we use the water in the sweat lodge, we should think of Wakan-Tanka who is always flowing, giving His power and life to everything; we should even be as water, which is lower than all things, yet stronger even than the rocks.
Since trifles make the sum of human things, and half our misery from our foibles springs; since life’s best joys consist in peace and ease, and few can save or serve, but all may please; Oh! let th’ ungentle spirit learn from hence a small unkindness is a great offense, large bounties to restore we wish in vain, but all may shun the guilt of giving pain.
Giving | Guilt | Life | Life | Offense | Pain | Peace | Spirit | Trifles | Unkindness | Learn |
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!
Acceptance | Advice | Doctrine | Giving | Life | Life | Meaning | Motives | Peace | Spirit |
True charity is spontaneous and finds its own occasion; it is never the offspring of importunity, nor of emulation.
Charity |
We should remember that the social utility of free speech is in giving us the informational base from which we can then make social choices. To refrain from making social choices is to say that beyond the issue of free speech we have no substantive values which we will express in action. If we do not discriminate in the actions we support or oppose, we cannot rectify the terrible injustices of the present world.
Action | Free speech | Giving | Present | Speech | Will | World |
Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the boundless multiplicity of possible forms accordant with the given concept, to whose bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rises aesthetically to ideas.
Example | Freedom | Genius | Giving | Ideas | Mind | Poetry | Rank | Thought | Wealth | Thought |
Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in.
Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.
John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom.
Behavior | Freedom | Giving | Individual | Organization | Power | Responsibility |
Generosity is giving more than you can; pride is taking less than you need.
Generosity | Giving | Need | Pride |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
Any judgment we make, no matter of whom, registers in the heart as a disruption of relationship, and the heart dutifully responds on behalf of our defense, shifting neural, hormonal, and electromagnetic systems from relational to defensive. Creator and created are giving rise to each other, we are judged as we have judged.
Defense | Giving | Heart | Judgment | Relationship |