This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice - to show more responsibility, more concern, and a nicer moral standard. But all of that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that the protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves." - Arne Dekke Eide Naess
"To live well we must have a faith fit to live by, a self fit to live with, and a work fit to live for." - Joseph Fort Newton
"To be happy is easy enough if we give ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving. No self-centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting." - Joseph Fort Newton
"It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The most vulnerable and at the same time the most unconquerable thing is human self-love; indeed, it is though being wounded that its power grows and can, in the end, become tremendous." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"When man, that master of destruction, of self-destruction, wounds himself, it is that very wound which forces him to live." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"It is often easier to justify one’s self to others than to respond to the secret doubts that arise in one’s own bosom." - Margaret Oliphant, fully Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant, née Margaret Oliphant Wilson
"Nature I believe in. True art aims to represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal—partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
"One cannot have faith without optimism. Faith and hope are inseparable. Depression is a great obstacle in the spiritual life and we must strive to conquer it... Cheerfulness is one of the essential spiritual qualities we must guard ourselves against dejection, self-denunciation, or even feeling a little down-hearted... Dejection invariably distorts our vision - it magnifies our troubles." - Paramananda, fully Swami Paramananda, born Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta NULL
"Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the loftiest kind thereof comes only of a religious stock - from consciousness of obligation and dependence upon God." - Joseph Parker
"Inherent in any system of belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy: what is expected is observed and what is observed confirms the expectations. When an individual alters his belief system he becomes aware of vast new realms of possibility." - Kenneth R. Pelletier
"All destiny begins with thinking. Responsibilities connected with the present duty. Duty of which leads to the balancing of the thought. One of the objects of life is to think without creating thoughts. That is without being attached to the object for which the thought is created and can be attained only when desire is self-controlled and directed by thinking. Until then, thoughts are created and are destiny." - Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival
"Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you." - Alexander Pope
"The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy - their own self-love." - Alexander Pope
"It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"A panic is the stampede of our self-possession." - Antoine de Rivarol, also known as Comte de Rivarol
"The self says, I am; the heart says, I am less; the spirit says, you are nothing." - Theodore Roethke
"Self-love is an instrument useful but dangerous; it often wounds the hand which makes use of it, and seldom does good without doing harm." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The only way to judge an event in life is to look at it from high enough, to see it in the order and dimension of the timeless. When we see pain, suffering and inequalities, we don’t understand or we jump to false conclusions. We see only the broken arc of a complete circle. Instead, life is a field for progress and progressive harmony. Each one of us has a part to play which he alone can execute. This role, based on our real nature - what Hindu scriptures call svabhava - can be discovered. An individual’s aim in life must be to find out the “law of his being” and act according to his svadharma. This discovery is no easy task. Normally, we are aware of our ego, the surface self that is a bundle of contradictory impulses. But we can find the true self, our best self, by a process of standing back and surveying our needs. Abandoning desire and self-assertion, accepting the challenges of life in a state of stable, unwavering peace will result in this supreme revelation. When life’s shocks turn our eyes inward, we rise above contingencies of time and place. Our perspective changes. The greatest sorrows is transformed into a luminous vibration. We see into the life of things. Life itself, a single, immense organism, moves toward a greater and higher harmony as more and more cells become conscious of their uniqueness. Life, then, is not Macbeths’s “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is a grand orchestra in which discordant notes contribute to the total harmony." - V. S. Seturaman
"It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self-examiner." - Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
"When you remember your dreams, you remember your Self, your hidden wounds, fears, desires and joys... When you explore you dreams, you begin to make yourself whole: you take back the powerful feelings of grief, rage, and love that you've denied or avoided. When you share your dreams, you are sharing deeply personal feelings that create bonds of intimacy and help you receive the love and support needed to heal and grow at times of change." - Alan B. Siegel
"To know our purpose for being here, we have to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know God who created us... Through knowing God’s love, through prayer, we come to find our best self. Each of us has a call. No two of us are alike in our potential for growth and development... Sometimes we find our meaning from our successes. Sometimes suffering is the prelude to understanding, and we realize that eventually, out of darkness, comes light... I chose to try to know God and to find a deeper meaning in life through sharing my life with others, reaching out and being more vulnerable and open to the stranger, the one in need, the depressed and the ill... The specific purpose each one of us discovers along the way, we do have a common purpose. It is to become part of the life of God; to know, love and serve Him; to come to know and love our brothers and sisters; to be energized and made whole by God’s tremendous love for us in this life and the next, a love that binds us all together." - Gilmary Simmons, born Eileen Catherine Simmons
"Proposed four consumption criteria for simple living. (1) Does what I own or buy promote activity, self-reliance, and involvement, or does it induce passivity and dependence? (2) Are my consumption patterns basically satisfying, or do I buy much that serves no real need? (3) How tied is my present job and lifestyle to installment payments, maintenance and repair costs, and the expectations of others? (4) Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns on other people and on the Earth?" - Duane Elgin and Arnold Mitchell (1918-1985)
"Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture." - Samuel Smiles
"In order to remain self-sufficient and calm during chaos, one must have a holistic perspective--a master plan with which help you cope. Those who are flexible and have prepared themselves will find that the accelerated changes to come will provide a profound opening of consciousness to minimize the stresses and discomforts of the journey." - Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe
"To let one's self go - that is what art is always aiming at." - Joel Elias Spingarn
"If this is correct, all that is contained in a single divine consciousness within which an inconceivably vast number of streams of finite experience interact and interweave. When the lower level streams of experience which correspond to the basic items postulated in physics enter into appropriately complex relations with each other they form aggregates (and aggregates of aggregates) which are what living things are in themselves, and which underpin the emergence of the streams of consciousness of animals and men. Within such streams of consciousness, more particularly the human, a not self aspect, which is primarily the physical world as it is for us, confronts a self aspect, and serves as its representation of the system of interweaving streams of experience n the midst of which it exists and with which it must interact appropriately in order to survive, communicate with other similar selves, and realize its personal essence as fully as it can." - Timothy Sprigge, fully Timothy L.S. Sprigge
"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority." - William Howard Taft
"Religion, like poetry, is not a mere idea, it is expression. The self-expression of God is in the endless variety of creation; and our attitude toward the Infinite Being must also in its expression have a variety of individuality ceaseless and unending. Those sects which jealously build their boundaries with too rigid creeds excluding all spontaneous movement of the living spirit may hoard their theology but they kill religion." -
"Do you know the first law of human nature? Self-propagation." - James Thurber and Elliott Nugent
"The heir of eternity, self-begotten and self-born." - Tibetan Book of the Dead NULL
"Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed of a self-control that protects them fro the errors of temporary excitement." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"We are here because embedded in our human nature is the secret code for heaven’s self-realization. Heaven is certainly omnipresent, may even be omniscient, but is most likely not omnipotent. It needs our active participation to realize its own truth... Since we help heaven to realize itself through our self-discovery, and self-understanding in day-to-day living, the ultimate meaning of life is found in our ordinary, human existence." - Tu Weiming
"The art of walking is at once suggestive of the dignity of man. Progressive motion alone implies power, but in almost every other instance it seems a power gained at the expense of self-possession." - Henry Theodore Tuckerman
"What I seem to be is just a certain quality of my attention to my Self." - Vedas, The Vedas NULL
"Offended self-love never forgives." - Étienne Vigée, fully Louis-Jean-Baptiste-Étienne Vigée
"The biological origins of awareness... Contact, communication and recognition all take place at a very simple level - occurring even amongst social bacteria that seem to be able to recognise self from non-self." - Lyall Watson
"We spend a good part of our time establishing personal boundaries, creating individuality by drawing lines that define the limits of the self. But it becomes increasingly clear that these limits are artificial. We are part of the fabric and cannot avoid being so. Mere anarchy is seldom loosed upon the real world." - Lyall Watson
"That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in every human being; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil, and social relations; that they teach men to love right, and hate wrong, and seek each other's welfare as children of a common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the heart, and thus make men proficient in self-government; and finally that they teach man to aspire after conformity to a being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes more purifying, exalted, and suited to his nature than any other book the world has ever known - these are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstrations of mathematics." -
"Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: it presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place which is strange, remote." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White