This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The Lord is your Staff and Support. Do not discard it; do not be led away from the path of faith by stories invented by malice and circulated by spite.
Very few are those perfect ones who do this good deed. The wealth of the Lord's Name is inexhaustible; it shall never be exhausted. In this world, it brings a constant peace, and at the Lord's Gate, it brings honor.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.
Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.
If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?
The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
To possess taste, one must have some soul.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If you love life, the fear of death.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The war is not so expensive that bondage.
Practice | Usefulness | Virtue | Virtue |
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
If we know not its love, its intellect, neither the worm within my belly seeks to know me, but his petty mischief wreaks:— thus it behooves us to be circumspect.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Vice foments war; it is virtue which actually fights. If there were no virtue, we would live in peace forever.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
High place is quick to educate high minds.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We are almost always guilty of the hate we encounter.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We don't have enough time to premeditate all our actions.