This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Shu Ching or Shu Jing or Shujing NULL
To know the truth is not difficult, but to follow it is.
The enjoyer (jiva), the objects of enjoyment and the Ruler (Isvara)-the triad described by the knowers of Brahman-all this is nothing but Brahman. This Brahman alone, which abides eternally within the self, should be known. Beyond It, truly, there is nothing else to be known.
Body | Deeds | Enjoyment | Evil | Good | Knowledge | Means | Mind | Virtue | Virtue | Deeds |
People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.
Greatness | Patriotism | Pride | Wants |
Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
If you understand real practice, then archery or other activities can be zen. If you don't understand how to practice archery in its true sense, then even though you practice very hard, what you acquire is just technique. It won't help you through and through. Perhaps you can hit the mark without trying, but without a bow and arrow you cannot do anything. If you understand the point of practice, then even without a bow and arrow the archery will help you. How you get that kind of power or ability is only through right practice.
Attainment | Practice | Pride | Will |
Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means beginner's mind. The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. Suppose you recite the Prajna Paramita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times, or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. The same thing will happen in your other Zen practices. For a while you will keep your beginner's mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind.
Simón Bolívar, fully Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco
America is ungovernable; those who served the revolution have plowed the sea.
Character | Government | Principles | Virtue | Virtue | Government |
Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.
Silius Italicus, fully Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus
Away with delay; the chance of great fortune is short-lived.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
The conceptions I have summarized here I first put forward only tentatively, but in the course of time they have won such a hold over me that I can no longer think in any other way.
Attention | Better | Cause | Change | Civilization | Ethics | Example | Love | Nothing | Possessions | Precept | Religion | Unhappiness | Virtue | Virtue | Obstacle | Think |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.
Absolute | Anarchy | Ethics | Existence | Freedom | Heart | Individual | Law | Man | Means | Merit | Oppression | Power | Relationship | Sense | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | World | Value |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.
Abstract | Art | Assertion | Death | Doctrine | Earth | Ethics | Evil | Existence | Existentialism | Good | Guarantee | Heaven | Individual | Justify | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Need | Paradise | Pride | Reason | Salvation | System | Thinking | Time | Truth | Universe | Weakness | Will | Work | World | Art | Old | Value |
Archibald Geikie, fully Sir Archibald Geikie
Geologists have not been slow to admit that they were in error in assuming that they had an eternity of past time for the evolution of the earth's history. They have frankly acknowledged the validity of the physical arguments which go to place more or less definite limits to the antiquity of the earth. They were, on the whole, disposed to acquiesce in the allowance of 100 millions of years granted to them by Lord Kelvin, for the transaction of the whole of the long cycles of geological history. But the physicists have been insatiable and inexorable. As remorseless as Lear's daughters, they have cut down their grant of years by successive slices, until some of them have brought the number to something less than ten millions. In vain have the geologists protested that there must somewhere be a flaw in a line of argument which tends to results so entirely at variance with the strong evidence for a higher antiquity, furnished not only by the geological record, but by the existing races of plants and animals. They have insisted that this evidence is not mere theory or imagination, but is drawn from a multitude of facts which become hopelessly unintelligible unless sufficient time is admitted for the evolution of geological history. They have not been able to disapprove the arguments of the physicists, but they have contended that the physicists have simply ignored the geological arguments as of no account in the discussion.
History | Occupation | Problems | Training |
Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
We often err by contemplating an individual solely in his relation and behaviour to us, and generalizing from that with more rapidity than wisdom. We might as well argue that the moon has no rotation about her axis, because the same hemisphere is always presented to our view.
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime--namely, repressive justice.
Humility | Intelligence | Nothing | Pride |
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
My dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends [grasps] anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.
Attainment | Evil | Nothing | Refinement | Risk | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Learn |
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
Let us then take care not to despise these things. How absurd it would be to grasp at money and throw away health; and to be lavish of the cleansing of the body, but economical over the cleansing of the soul; and to seek for freedom from earthly slavery, but not to care about heavenly freedom; and to make every effort to be splendidly housed and dressed, but to have never a thought how you yourself may become really very precious; and to be zealous to do good to others, without any desire to do good to yourself. And if good could be bought, you would spare no money; but if mercy is freely at your feet, you despise it for its cheapness. Every time is suitable for your ablution, since any time may be your death. With Paul I shout to you with that loud voice, ‘Behold now is the accepted time; behold Now is the day of salvation.
Adversity | Attention | Esteem | Nothing | Prosperity | Sin | Virtue | Virtue |