This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Patrick Blackett, bully Baron Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
People who've had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they're bland.... An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That's the gift you're given.
Childhood | Happy | Imagination | World | Old |
Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith
Favors, and especially pecuniary ones, are generally fatal to friendship; for our pride will ever prompt us to lower the value of the gift by diminishing that of the donor.
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.
Do not leave yourself to despair; it stands between you and the dialogue with your heart. Do not try to explain feelings. Live everything intensely and treasure what you feel as a gift from God… Do not try to walk in all the roads at the same time! Don’t allow your wounds to transform you into someone you are not. Don’t be afraid. The only way to avoid that suffering is to refuse love. Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do… Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. The best way to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions.
Destroy | Mediocrity | Suffering |
Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again… Loving means to achieve communion with each other and discover the divine spark in him… Loneliness, when accepted, becomes a gift that will lead us to find a purpose in life… Long since, the desert wind wiped away our footprints in the sand. But at every second of my existence, I remember what happened, and you still walk in my dreams and in my reality. Thank you for having crossed my path.
Everything said to myself that I was about to have a wrong decision, but to suffer from mistakes is just part of life. The world wants something from you? Do not want to risk it again and returned to where they have gone by I do not have the courage to say yes to it? I made a mistake when his first eleven years old, when her son I can ask to see him not borrow a pencil, from then on, I realized that sometimes you do not have a second chance and it is better to accept the gift that this world gift . Of course it's risky, but risk is greater risk that their bus was sitting on the forty-eight hours to get here might have an accident? If I must be honest with someone or something, you have to do, and first, to be honest with yourself already. If you are looking for a true love, then you must first remove the trivial love from people you have. What little experience I have taught her is that no one owns anything at all, that everything is an illusion-and illusion that the physical affects as well as the soul of all things so. Anyone who has lost something that they think it is theirs forever (as it has frequently happened to me last time), finally realizes that nothing really belongs to them all. And if nothing belongs to me at all, then it is useless to waste time to take care of things is not his; best to live as if today is the first (or also may be the last day) of life.
Better | Care | Chance | Courage | Experience | Illusion | Little | Love | Mistake | Nothing | People | Risk | Soul | Time | Wants | Waste | World | Wrong | Think |
Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
To use fear as the friend it is, we must retrain and reprogram ourselves...We must persistently and convincingly tell ourselves that the fear is here--with its gift of energy and heightened awareness--so we can do our best and learn the most in the new situation.
Seeing. One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing — if not ultimately, at least essentially. To be more is to be more united — and this sums up and is the very conclusion of the work to follow. But unity grows, and we will affirm this again, only if it is supported by an increase of consciousness, of vision. That is probably why the history of the living world can be reduced to the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes at the heart of a cosmos where it is always possible to discern more. Are not the perfection of an animal and the supremacy of the thinking being measured by the penetration and power of synthesis of their glance? To try to see more and to see better is not, therefore, just a fantasy, curiosity, or a luxury. See or perish. This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence. And thus, to a higher degree, this is the human condition.
Better | Heart | History | Life | Life | Perfection | Power | Thinking | Unity | Universe | Will | Work | World |
I think when a reader reads a whole book - which takes six to ten hours – that’s kind of a gift to the author. The gift of close, undivided attention. To who else do we listen so closely for eight straight hours? And when readers give that gift to me, I’m grateful for it.
Think |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
His calling is a declaration of love. Your response is commitment, friendship, and love manifested in the gift of your own life as a definitive following and as a permanent sharing in his mission and in his consecrations. To make up your mind is to love him with all of your soul and all of your heart in such a way that this love becomes the standard and motive of all your actions.
Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Mission | Soul | Following |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
Labor is not merely the fatigue of body without sense or value; nor is it merely a humiliating servitude. It is a service of God, a gift of God, the vigor and fullness of human life, the gauge of eternal rest.
Pope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli NULL
In order to imbue civilization with sound principles and enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause. For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organizations and influence them from within. And since our present age is one of outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not be able to enter these organizations and work effectively from within unless he is scientifically competent, technically capable and skilled in the practice of his own profession.
Age | Civilization | Desire | Enough | Faith | Good | Influence | Order | Practice | Present | Principles | Progress | Sound | Spirit | Will | Work |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
Stupidity is also a gift from God, but one mustn't misuse it.
Pope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli NULL
Nevertheless, in order to imbue civilization with sound principles and enliven it with the spirit of the gospel, it is not enough to be illumined with the gift of faith and enkindled with the desire of forwarding a good cause. For this end it is necessary to take an active part in the various organizations and influence them from within. And since our present age is one of outstanding scientific and technical progress and excellence, one will not be able to enter these organizations and work effectively from within unless he is scientifically competent, technically capable and skilled in the practice of his own profession.
Age | Civilization | Desire | Enough | Faith | Good | Influence | Order | Practice | Present | Principles | Progress | Sound | Spirit | Will | Work |
A sense of his or her own worth is no doubt the greatest gift we can offer another, the greatest contribution we can make to any life. We can give this gift and make this contribution only through love. However, it is essential that our love be liberating, not possessive. We must at all times give those we love the freedom to be themselves. Love affirms the other as "other". It does not possess and manipulate another as "mine".
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
The family, as the fundamental and essential educating community, is the privileged means for transmitting the religious and cultural values which help the person to acquire his or her own identity. Founded on love and open to the gift of life, the family contains in itself the very future of society; its most special task is to contribute effectively to a future of peace.