This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
A further consequence of such a system of truth is the development of a temporalistic, relativistic, and nihilistic mentality. The sensory world is in a state of incessant flux and becoming. There is nothing unchangeable in it - not even an eternal Supreme Being. Mind dominated by the truth of the senses simply cannot perceive any permanency, but apprehends all values in terms of shift and transformation. Sensate mentality views everything from the standpoint of evolution and progress. This leads to an increasing neglect of the eternal values, which come to be replaced by temporary, or short-time, considerations. Sensate society lives in, and appreciates mainly, the present. Since the past is irretrievable and no longer exists, while the future is not yet here and is uncertain, only the present moment is real and desirable.
Eternal | Evolution | Future | Mind | Neglect | Nothing | Past | Present | Society | System | Truth | World | Society |
And if you follow our precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome or receive you. This is the message which is to be delivered to our children.
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
Be firm in faith through life's tests and trials. Break not your word of honor whatever may befall. Hold your ideal high in all circumstances. Keep to your principles in prosperity as well as in adversity. Uphold your honor at any cost. Do not neglect those who depend upon you. Observe constancy in love. Blessed are the unselfish friends and they whose motto in life is constancy. Meet the world with smiles in all conditions of life. Bring out the Beloved in others.
Constancy | Faith | Honor | Life | Life | Neglect | Principles | Prosperity | World | Friends |
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Pestilence comes upon the world because of crimes deserving the death penalties enjoined in the Torah that are not brought before the court; and because of the transgressions of the Torahs of the seventh year produce (Leviticus 25:1-7). The sword comes upon the world because of the delaying of justice and the perverting of justice; and because of those that teach Torah not according to the Halakah. Exile comes upon the world because of idolatry and incest and the shedding of blood; and because of neglect to give release to the soil during the sabbatical year.
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabbi Meir said: “Engage little in business but occupy yourself with Torah. Be humble in spirit before all men. If you neglect Torah many causes for neglecting it will present themselves to you; but if you labor in Torah then G-d has abundant reward to give you.”
Business | Labor | Little | Neglect | Present | Reward | Spirit | Will | Business | Torah |
Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
We neglect those things which are under our very eyes, and heedless of things within our grasp, pursue those which are afar off.
Neglect |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.
R. H. Tawney, fully Richard Henry Tawney
[It is necessary to assign]... to economic activity itself its proper place as servant, not a master, of society. The burden of our civilisation is not merely, as many suppose, that the product of industry is sill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, or its operation interrupted by embittered disagreements. It is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests, which no single interest, and least of all the provision of the material means of existence, is fit to occupy. Like a hypochondriac who is so absorbed in the processes of his own digestion that he goes to his grave before he has begun to live, industrialised communities neglect the very objects for which it is worth while to acquire riches in their feverish preoccupation with the means by which riches can be acquired.
Conduct | Grave | Industry | Means | Neglect | Position | Riches | Worth | Riches |
Insensibility, in return for acts of seeming, even of real, unkindness, is not required of us. But, whilst we feel for such acts, let our feelings be tempered with forbearance and kindness. Let not the sense of our own sufferings render us peevish and morose. Let not our sense of neglect on the part of others induce us to judge of them with harshness and severity. Let us be indulgent and compassionate towards them. Let us seek for apologies for their conduct. Let us be forward in endeavoring to excuse them. And if, in the end, we must condemn them, let us look for the cause of their delinquency, less in a defect of kind intention than in the weakness and errors of human nature. He who knoweth of what we are made, and hath learned, by what he himself suffered, the weakness and frailty of our nature, hath thus taught us to make compassionate allowances for our brethren, in consideration of its manifold infirmities.
Cause | Consideration | Feelings | Forbearance | Intention | Neglect | Sense | Weakness |
Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
Perspective is that part of a poem, novel, or play which a writer never puts directly upon paper. It is that fixed point in intellectual space where a writer stands to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of his people. There are times when he may stand too close and the result is a blurred vision. Or he may stand too far away and the result is a neglect of important things.
The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Neglect | Revolution | Security |
The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.
Achievement | Art | Neglect | Thought | Truth | Art | Think | Thought |
Samuel Niger, aka Shmuel Niger, pseudonymn of Samuel Charney
A man of learning is never bored.
Education | Government | Neglect | Government |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face.
Contemplation | Life | Life | Man | Neglect | Right | Service | Contemplation |
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Let us pass to the despotic part of the soul, spirit. We must not eliminate it utterly from the youth nor yet allow him to use it all the time. Let us train boys from earliest childhood to be patient when they suffer wrongs themselves, but, if they see another being wronged, to sally forth courageously and aid the sufferer in fitting measure. –