This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Do not forget the most important fact that neither heredity nor environment is a determining factor. Both are giving only the frame and the influences which are answered by the individual in regard to his styled creative power." - Alfred Adler
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing." - Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
"Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you." - André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
"No one has ever become poor by giving." - Anne Frank, fully Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank
"Giving much thought to the future is vain. Only one task is worthy of the doing and that is to express the Here and Now. And to express means building, out of the infinite diversity of the Here and Now, a visage dominating it. It means shaping silence out of stones. Any other claim is but an ado of words that weave the wind." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"True humility impels you, not to demean yourself, but to open your heart. It is the key to giving and receiving." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Instead of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations; the past, too, was very different from what we suppose it to have been." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs, they immediately set up a shrill bark." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Gratitude takes three forms: a feeling in the heart, an expression in words, and a giving in return." - Author Unknown NULL
"When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked." - Author Unknown NULL
"It is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life." - Author Unknown NULL
"There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life--happiness, freedom, and peace of mind--are always attained by giving them to someone else." - Author Unknown NULL
"The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel." - Blaise Pascal
"To pity the unhappy is not contrary to selfish desire; on the other hand, we are glad of the occupation to thus testify friendship and attract to ourselves the reputation of tenderness, without giving anything." - Blaise Pascal
"God, in giving life to all created things, is surely bountiful to them according to their qualities. Hence the tree that is full of life He fosters and sustains, while that which is ready to fall He cuts off and destroys." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The principle of higher learning [higher education] consists in preserving man’s clear character, in giving new life to the people, and in dwelling in perfection, or the ultimate good." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely and discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime" - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"We are always doing something with a selfish motive. The key is how to practice with no thought of gaining, not seeking or wanting something either from our practice or from what we do or give. So often when we give, it is not real giving. We give something to someone and right away we want something back in return." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
"Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy, which makes the heart attach itself successively to all the qualities of the person we love, giving preference now to one and presently to another." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Old age consoles itself by giving good precepts for being unable to give bad examples." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on "giving as good as they get."" - Elbert Green Hubbard
"One of the greatest obstacles to giving unconditional love is our fear that the love may not be returned… When you feel unloved, it is not because you are not receiving love; it is because you are withholding love." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"The key to patience is knowing that everything is going to be fine, developing the faith that there is a plan… The first step to becoming more patient is giving up the need to fix or change things." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"We probably have a greater love for those we support than those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest... There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his." - Eric Hoffer
"In giving, a man receives more than he gives, and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given." - George MacDonald
"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." - Hannah More
"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." - Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
"The saint… is one who succeeds in giving us at least a glimpse of eternity, despite the thick opacity of time." - Henri de Lubac
"There is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving." - Henry Drummond
"Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. On the contrary, it consists in giving, and in serving others." - Henry Drummond
"In the pursuit of happiness half the world is on the wrong scent. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. Happiness is really found in giving and in serving others." - Henry Drummond
"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!" - Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
"No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving. Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"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." - Howard Zinn
"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." - Immanuel Kant
"Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege." - John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.
"It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving." - John Ruskin
"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." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
"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." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"The toddler is allowed to regulate his own exploratory behavior. What occurs as a result of this entire mechanism is that nature’s imperative to explore the world at large is overwhelmed by the greater imperative to avoid the pain of a broken relationship with the life-giving caregiver. What will be developed in the child is a capacity for deception as he tries to maintain some vestige of integrity while outwardly appearing to conform. Living a lie to survive a lying culture, the child forgets the truth of who he really is." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"Generosity is giving more than you can; pride is taking less than you need." - Kahlil Gibran
"Let the season of giving be yours and not that of your inheritors." - Kahlil Gibran
"Money-giving is a good criterion of a person's mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill people." - Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger
"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." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"Nobody is ever impoverished through the giving of charity." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL