This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"How many of us are waiting for the opportunity to do some great thing for the betterment of our community, forgetting that the solution of the problem requires only the active intelligent fulfillment of individual civic duty. The only things which are wrong about our Government are the things which are wrong with you and me. Democracy is never a thing done; it is and always will be a goal to be achieved. It means action, not passive acquiescence in things as they are; it requires alertness to duty, a dynamic faith, a willingness to give for the good of all. It can live only as a result of loyalty and devotion to its principles expressed by daily needs." - Douglas L. Edmonds, fully Douglas Lyman Edmonds
"There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
"Never tell a young person that something can not be done. God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossible to do that thing." - John Andrew Holmes
"As my prayer became more attentive and inward I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent. I started to listen - which is even the further removed from speaking. I first thought that praying entailed speaking. I then learnt that praying is hearing, not merely being silent. This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
"Life means love. We are here for love. Only love is real and everything is real thanks to love. We are nomads wandering through illusionary space. How to make it real? Only by destroying limits that separate us from others. No violence, no attempts at escape can help, only love. Too often love is more painful than joyful. The instances of love are much shorter than the periods during which we wait for love to emerge. The meaning of living is mastering the art of waiting." - Georgii Litichevsky Semenovich
"Everyone has, I think, in some quiet corner of his mind, an ideal home waiting to become a reality." - Paige Rense, aka Paige Rense Noland
"I would sit quietly for hours and hours in meditation, but nothing came to my heart. I didn’t feel or realize anything... Then I learned to pray for the sake of prayer and not for anything else. I would not be satisfied with anything but God. If our prayers are that sincere and our interest is only in God and nothing else, then God cannot sit quietly somewhere. He has to run to us. If we need help, it is always waiting. All we need to do is ask sincerely." - Satchidananda, fully Swami Satchidananda, born C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder NULL
"Gross utility kills beauty. We now have all over the world huge production of things, huge organizations, huge administrations of empire - all obstructing the path of life. Civilization is waiting for a great consummation, for an expression of its soul in beauty. This must be your contribution to the world." -
"The superior man is quiet and calm, waiting for the appointments of Heaven, while the mean man walks in dangerous paths, looking for lucky occurrences." - Tze-sze NULL
"Philosophy... consists in keeping the demon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor feeling the need of another man’s doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"There is no one who cannot find a place for himself in our kind of world. Each of us has some unique capacity waiting for realization. Every person is valuable in his own existence - for himself alone." - George H. Bender
"Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well." - Henry Scott Holland
"Research... is nothing but a state of mind - a friendly, welcoming attitude toward change; going out to look for a change instead of waiting for it to come. Research, for practical men, is an effort to do things better." - Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering
"Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They don’t use their brains and they have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don’t use the knowledge of the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere - a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big, empty hole which they find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It’s a quick comfortable superhighway, but I know where it leads to. I’ve seen it. I’ve been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it." - Lame Deer, fully John Fire Lame Deer, aka The Old Man, born Tȟáȟča Hušté
"The souls of all our brethren are ever hovering about us, craving for a caress, and only waiting for the signal." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
"The first sign of love to God is not to be afraid of death, and to be always waiting for it. For death unites the friend to his friend - the seeker to the object which he seeks." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali
"Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change. Human society will, of course, continue to develop – in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude." - Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
"God is waiting for us to stop waiting and begin to do now all the things for which this day was made." - Sidney Greenberg
"Strength comes from waiting." - José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez
"I always say it was great for God to send his only son, but I’m waiting for him to send his only daughter. Then things will really be great." - Candace Pert, fully Candace Beebe Pert
"Do not be put off if you find that you have to wait and experiment. Be sure that you will have disappointments to endure. But do not be satisfied without some side line in which you may give yourself out as a man to men. There is one waiting for you if only you are willing to take it up in the right spirit." - Albert Schweitzer
"Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." - Vivian Greene
"The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration." - Ernest Newman
"Happiness is an attitude, a perception, an interpretation. It is not a commodity, waiting to be purchased and appropriated. It is a way of living that is loving, open, flexible, and respectful of what life offers, regardless of expectations." - Alan Epstein
"There's no need to hang about waiting for the Last Judgment - it takes place every day." - Albert Camus
"Patience does not mean indifference. We may work and trust and wait, but we ought not to be idle or careless while waiting." - Alexander Hamilton
"Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibly, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Religion is the vision of something that stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehensions, something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Time always seems long to the child who is waiting -- for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"There are many paths to knowledge already discovered; and no enlightened man doubts that there are many more waiting to be discovered. Indeed, all paths lead to knowledge; because even the vilest and stupidest action teaches us something about vileness and stupidity and may accidentally teach us a good deal more." - George Bernard Shaw
"Marriage is like a war. There are moments of chivalry and gallantry that attend the victorious advances and strategic retreats, the birth or death of children, the momentary conquest of loneliness, the sacrifice that ennobles him who makes it. But mostly there are the long dull sieges, the waiting, the terror and boredom. Women understand this better than men; they are better able to survive attrition." - Helen Hayes
"Feeling does not become stronger in the religious life by waiting, but by using it." - Henry Ward Beecher
"In the heat of [social] movements brains are set stirring with new ideas which live on through quieter times, waiting for another opportunity to ignite into action and change the world around us." - Howard Zinn
"Nonviolence does not mean acceptance, but resistance - not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive. It involves strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation, mass demonstrations, and sabotage, as well as appeals to the conscience of the world, even to individuals in the oppressing group who might break away from their past." - Howard Zinn
"In the creative process, we are called to co-create with the thing that wants birthing. We must listen, open ourselves, summon courage, commit ourselves to the task, and begin. And this is the hardest part: in the face of nothing, we must begin. Not waiting for the sentence to be fully formed before writing the first word. Not waiting for the completed image to manifest in our minds before approaching the canvas." - Jan Phillips
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our love." - Jeremy Rifkin
"Enmity is anger waiting for a chance for revenge." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"How much of human life is lost in waiting!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet." - Ralph Waldo Emerson