This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
Character | Emotions | People | Practice | Will | Understand |
Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond
Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed.
Pleasure comes from obtaining what we feel we are lacking. We have the ability to choose our answer to the question, “What am I lacking right now?” Some people answer materialistically. It is wiser to choose to focus on your lack of spiritual accomplishments and then you can derive pleasure from meeting those needs.
Ability | Character | Focus | People | Pleasure | Question | Right |
Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke
Live by admiration rather than disgust. Judge people by their best, not by their worst.
Admiration | Character | People |
No person sees all of his faults. Every person considers himself righteous an feels whatever he does is correct. For every act a person does, he has a thousand excuses and rationalizations. A person does not see what goes against his prejudices. Other people can be much more objective about you and can find your wrongdoings and faults. Hence, be willing to listen to what an admonisher has to say.
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.
Character | Day | Earth | Fate | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Smile | Sympathy | Work | Fate | Happiness |
You can't stop the people from thinking - but you can start them.
Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.
Character | Experience | Failure | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Unique | Happiness |
Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke
Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.