This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us with the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense.
Better | Defense | Disgrace | Feelings | Prejudice | World | Friends | Think |
Many people consider the happiest days in their lives when they received the applause and acclaim of others. But the fact they needed someone else’s approval for their happiness makes them dependent on others. Someone who can find happiness even when he is insulted is assured of having a happy life. Once a person knows that he is able to experience positive feelings even when insulted, he is free from the fear of what people might say to him. This can give a persona feeling of liberation. If you believe someone else’s words cannot hurt you, they won’t.
Applause | Experience | Fear | Feelings | Happy | Life | Life | People | Words | Approval | Happiness |
Do not allow another person’s evaluation affect your feelings of self-esteem... Being an honored person is dependent on your behavior towards others and not on other people’s behavior towards you. Why feel any lack of self-worth just because someone acts disrespectfully to you? Keep your focus on your behavior towards others. When someone does not treat you with respect, it is his problem, not yours... Ultimately, it is your mind that decides on how you will consider yourself.
Behavior | Esteem | Feelings | Focus | Mind | People | Respect | Self | Self-esteem | Self-worth | Will | Worth |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.
Abstract | Feelings | Mistake | Object | Psychoanalysis | Reality | Society | Society |
Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood?
I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.
Bitterness | Feelings | Fulfillment | Life | Life | People |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier, and simpler.
Feelings |
Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
Acknowledging experience and reflecting feelings are helpful interpersonal skills. However, they are not tricks or gimmicks. Nor can they be used mechanically. They are helpful only within a context of concern and respect. In human relations the agents of help are never solely the techniques, but the person who employs them. Without compassion and authenticity, the techniques fail.
Compassion | Experience | Feelings |
Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity. The nature of man is such that he is born with a fondness for profit. If he indulges this fondness, it will lead him into wrangling and strife, and all sense of courtesy and humility will disappear. He is born with feelings of envy and hate, and if he indulges these, they will lead him into violence and crime, and all sense of loyalty and good faith will disappear.
Courtesy | Envy | Faith | Feelings | Good | Humility | Loyalty | Loyalty | Man | Nature | Sense | Will |
Jacques Barzun, fully Jacques Martin Barzun
Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.
Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.
Feelings | Individual | Man | Myth | Public | System | Unique | Will | Propaganda |
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
We must not measure the reality of love by feelings, but by results. Feelings are very delusive. They often depend on mere natural temperament, and the devil wrests them to our hurt. A glowing imagination is apt to seek itself rather than God. But if you are earnest in striving to serve and endure for God's sake, if you persevere amid temptation, dryness, weariness, and desolation, you may rest assured that your love is real.
Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
To give heart and mind to God, so that they are ours no longer - to do good without being conscious of it, to pray ceaselessly and without effort as we breathe - to love without stopping to reflect upon our feelings - such is the perfect forgetfulness of self, which casts us upon God, as a babe rests upon its mother's breast.
Effort | Feelings | Forgetfulness | Good | Heart | Love | Mind |
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain
Destroy | Evil | Experience | Feelings | Love | Pain | People | Right | Society | Strength | Society | Afraid |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell.
Feelings |