This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
In Godmanhood human freedom unites with the divine freedom, the human image with the divine image. By inward experience and inward living of freedom the light of that Truth is attained.
Experience | Freedom | Light | Truth |
At best God can only reveal himself to us in terms of our experience in our historic setting. And the revelation that comes to us is to cooperate with God to bring form and order into the world as it is.
Experience | God | Order | Revelation | World | God |
The meaning of life is wrapped up in what will remain after we depart. The meaning of life is to help create a better future... The meaning of life is to be mindful of the past - to always remember - in order to make certain that history’s atrocities are not repeated again and that justice will win.
Better | Future | History | Justice | Life | Life | Meaning | Order | Past | Will | Wisdom |
Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL
The way to final freedom is within thy SELF.
A goal-oriented life locates the purposed of life in the achievement of a goal, which is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time… But we also exist across time, and when our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life… Moments slip away and so if life’s purpose is tied to moments. Although moments can play a part, in order to find a purpose which is truly fulfilling, we also need to find a way of living which is worthwhile in itself. Life is rarely an undiluted pleasure that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being.
Achievement | Goals | Important | Justice | Life | Life | Need | Order | Play | Pleasure | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Time |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Not from anything in the world would I be free from God; I wish to be free in God and for God. It is needful that my passion for a freedom without bounds should involve a conflict with the world, but not with God.
Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci
The sexual act takes on qualitative significance and value which transcends the other meanings the sexual act can have, when lovers use the act purposely to become parents. For now the two lovers express their faith in love itself, in the possibilities open to their children within the social order and in this world.
I knew that the complete mystic “way” includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the latter consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him.
At last religion has come to reckon with the fact that its highest quest is not for a supernatural order but just for natural goodness in the largest and fullest measure.
Grace Helen Yerbury, fully Grace Helen Davies Yerbury
If man's religion is of any importance, it is not just a garment of expression of unity with and security in the professed beliefs of a special group. It is rather an attitude of respect for himself, his God, his fellowman, which underwrites all his activity, which is allowed freedom of expression within the limitations of that respect.
Freedom | God | Man | Religion | Respect | Security | Unity | Wisdom | Respect |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Spirit is man’s whole creative act. Spirit is freedom, and freedom has its roots in the depths of pre-existential being.
In its purest form music is not a representational but rather a nonobjective, nonverbal world, it is a world of its own, almost a creatio ex hihilo, an occasion for immediacy of experience, a nonreducible mode of beauty, of contrast and resolution, of order and ecstasy flowing through and beyond the order. Order, and ecstasy rooted in order: that sounds like the relation between law and love, law and gospel.
Beauty | Contrast | Ecstasy | Experience | Law | Love | Music | Order | Resolution | World |
Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand.
Order | Understand |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
Duty | Freedom | God | Man | Sacrifice | Spirit | Suffering |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The dignity of man and the dignity of faith require the recognition of freedom to choose the truth, and freedom in the truth. Freedom cannot be identified with goodness or truth or perfection: it is by nature autonomous, it is freedom and not goodness.
Dignity | Faith | Freedom | Man | Nature | Perfection | Truth |