This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Faith is the song of life. Woe to him who wishes to rob life of its splendid poetry. The whole mass of prosaic literature and knowledge is of value only when it is founded on the perception of the poetry of life.
Faith | Knowledge | Life | Life | Literature | Perception | Poetry | Wishes | Woe | Value |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
Intuition [is] perception via the unconscious.
Intuition | Perception |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
If you want to shrink something you must first allow it to expand. If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must first allow it to be given. This is called the subtle perception of the way things are. The soft overcomes the hard. The slow overcomes the fast. Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results.
Mystery | People | Perception |
Reading is actually plunging into one’s own identity and, one hopes, emerging stronger than before. You see, unconsciously, we are seeking to find an affirmation to our own world perception and set of values.
Perception | Reading | World |
In all ages, literature aims at the interpretation of the universe and a deep perception of humanity by means of language.
Aims | Humanity | Language | Literature | Means | Perception | Universe |
Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
Mind | Perception | Quiet | World |
The evaluative aspects of our everyday lives depend on the intentionality and phenomenology of perception or appreciation.
It is creative perception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living.
Individual | Life | Life | Perception | Worth |
Suffering is born of wrong thinking. The root of pain is error in perception . There can be no error in Truth, only errors in the perception of Truth. If you yearn to end human suffering, know, then, what is Real, for this Knowledge is the only source of invincible faith.
Error | Faith | Knowledge | Pain | Perception | Suffering | Thinking | Truth | Wrong |
The mind could never mar one iota of Truth. The Truth is eternal, and it is not in any way assailable. Our perception of Truth is, however, vulnerable, and it is too easily distorted by the web of ignorance, spun by the crafty spider of the rational mind. In order to know the Truth, we must learn to recognize a Source other than facts.
Eternal | Ignorance | Mind | Order | Perception | Truth | Learn |
The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real object.
Cause | Laughter | Object | Perception |
Normal perception is completely controlled by the unconscious mind which obeys suggestions implicitly.
Mind | Perception |
One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another.
Delusion | Dreams | Feelings | Life | Life | Man | Perception | Truth | Think |
[Zen] is not a kind of “self-actualization,” an expansion of the limited, isolated Me, of the empirical ego. Neither is it a regression, a return into that vegetative ooze of Oneness, before we became aware of our differentiation as separate egos. On the contrary, the Zen experience is the overcoming of the hallucination that the Me is the valid center of observation of the universe. It is a momentary, radical turnabout, a direct perception of and insight into the presence, into the transiency, the finitude that I share with all beings.
Ego | Experience | Insight | Observation | Oneness | Perception | Self | Universe | Zen |