This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The reward of the adventure of life is freedom. The irony of the adventure is that we were free before we set out, but we needed to learn that freedom was not to be found where we fantasized it to be. We needed to learn, like our old friend Dorothy from Kansas, that there’s no place like home, because there is no place but Home. When we learn that God is everywhere, that Love fills all space, and that Truth is the very Ground of our Being, we may surely release the little to embrace the All." -
"The reward of the adventure of life is freedom. The irony of the adventure is that we were free before we set out, but we needed to learn that freedom was not to be found where we fantasized it to be. We needed to learn, like our old friend Dorothy from Kansas, that there’s no place like home, because there is no place but Home. When we learn that God is everywhere, that Love fills all space, and that Truth is the very Ground of our Being, we may surely release the little to embrace the All." -
"Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! it's a chore, on the contrary, and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting." - Albert Camus
"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward." - Amelia Earhart, fully Amelia Mary Earhart
"All religions promise a reward… for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Every virtue carries with it its own reward, but none in so distinguished and pre-eminent a degree as benevolence." - Author Unknown NULL
"Man’s unique reward.. is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Just as virtue is its own reward, so is vice its own punishment." - Baltasar Gracián
"The first and last lesson of Yoga is the attitude of mind and heart. The aim of Yoga is to unite mind, body, spirit. The reward of yoga practice is the conversion of physical energy into mind power. The practices give a definite sense of control and raise the levels of consciousness awareness. These practices are not to be done competitively, to exhibit to one's friends, to expand the ego. While each of us, according to our temperament, must find the best mental approach, it should be one of self-surrender. Quiet, but joyful. Concentrated. Never strained. Outer control of the body is a means of regulating the inner functioning." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well a being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward." - Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
"Virtue's its own reward. So's jollity." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"Verily God does not reward man for what he does, but for what he is." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze
"Get into the habit of being both strict and friendly toward yourself; demand a certain standard of performance; approve of yourself, even reward yourself if you attain it. For too often we pursue just the wrong tactics. When we should be acting, we indulge or excuse ourselves for inactivity; we then upbraid and punish ourselves ruthlessly and futility. The scolding is futile because we somehow feel that, if we have been severe and cutting to ourselves, we have in some way atoned for the fault of non-performance. We have not, of course. We have not done what we planned, and we have discouraged and hurt ourselves in the bargain." - Dorothea Brande
"That is not virtue which looks for a reward." - Felix Adler
"All capital... is nothing but spare subsistence. It is the superfluous part of a man’s income - that which he is content not to consume, or can easily be persuaded to forego for the present for the sake of some future advantage. Thus capital has been called “the reward of abstinence.”" - George Bernard Shaw
"A great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle (patriotism) alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward." - George Washington
"I know [patriotism] exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward." - George Washington
"The whole of life and experience goes to show, that right or wrong doing, whether as to the physical or the spiritual nature, is sure in the end to meet its appropriate reward or punishment. Penalties may be delayed but they are sure to come." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever." - Horace Mann
"To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them." - Hugh Prather
"When the thinking man has conquered the temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward." - Immanuel Kant
"A just security to property is not afforded by that government under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species; where arbitrary tax invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied by an unfeeling policy as another spur; in violation of that sacred property which heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities." - James Madison
"Virtue is its own reward." - John Dryden
"Love is love's reward." - John Dryden
"Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward." - John Henry Newman
"The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes of it." - John Ruskin
"The highest reward for a person’s work is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." - John Ruskin
"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it." - John Ruskin
"In short, heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but as the natural effect, of a religious life." - Joseph Addison
"There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward." - Kahlil Gibran
"Honor is the reward of virtue." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The consciousness of having done a splendid action is itself a sufficient reward." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"So heavenly father, what’s my reward? Reward? What reward? That’s what you were supposed to do." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. " - Napoleon Hill
"Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it. " - Napoleon Hill
"If persons are going to be independent thinkers, they are probably going to pay a cost. One has to begin with the way the world works: the world does not reward honesty and independence, it rewards obedience and service. It's a world of concentrated power, and those who have power are not going to reward people who question that power." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue." - Oliver Goldsmith
"Let the ruler be slow to punish, swift to reward." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"Not among many thousands will you find one man who considers virtue its own reward." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"The only reward of virtue is virtue." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The reward of a thing done well is to have done it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson