This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Timothy Sprigge, fully Timothy L.S. Sprigge
If this is correct, all that is contained in a single divine consciousness within which an inconceivably vast number of streams of finite experience interact and interweave. When the lower level streams of experience which correspond to the basic items postulated in physics enter into appropriately complex relations with each other they form aggregates (and aggregates of aggregates) which are what living things are in themselves, and which underpin the emergence of the streams of consciousness of animals and men. Within such streams of consciousness, more particularly the human, a not self aspect, which is primarily the physical world as it is for us, confronts a self aspect, and serves as its representation of the system of interweaving streams of experience n the midst of which it exists and with which it must interact appropriately in order to survive, communicate with other similar selves, and realize its personal essence as fully as it can.
Consciousness | Experience | Men | Order | Self | System | Wisdom | World |
It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men, the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up and growing at length into a mighty pyramid.
Art | Business | Experience | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Men | Observation | Science | Success | Wisdom |
Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe
If the body is only the vehicle by which the soul can access the experience of physical living, then there is no real physical me. The soul (or life force) is the only real me. If you and I (the souls) want to achieve the most from this earthly lifetime, the more varied the experiences we should seek. That said, it’s too easy for you and me to fall into a comfort zone and try to avoid change. To keep this from happening, the experiences change rapidly as a result of the body moving from infancy though old age. The physical changes help to enhance our learning curve, our ability to serve, and our chance to evolve.
Ability | Age | Body | Chance | Change | Comfort | Experience | Force | Infancy | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | Soul | Wisdom | Old |
Those who obtain riches by labor, care, and watching, know their value. Those who impart them to sustain and extend knowledge, virtue, and religion, know their use. Those who lose them by accident or fraud know their vanity. And those who experience the difficulties and dangers of preserving them know their perplexities.
Accident | Care | Experience | Fraud | Knowledge | Labor | Religion | Riches | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Riches |
Olaf Stapledon, fully William Olaf Stapledon
I should like to persuade religious people that some of us who reject their faith, nevertheless do have an experience which is at least very much like their essential religious experience. We feel, sometimes with remarkable intensity and clarity, our ‘at-oneness’ with something which might be the fundamental reality behind appearances.
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable.
Events | Experience | Future | Inevitable | Past | Wisdom |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
In times when the passions are beginning to take charge of the conduct of human affairs, one should pay less attention to what men of experience and common sense are thinking than to what is preoccupying the imagination of dreamers.
Attention | Beginning | Common Sense | Conduct | Experience | Imagination | Men | Sense | Thinking | Wisdom |
Martha Washington, fully Martha Dandridge Curtis Washington
I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
Circumstances | Experience | Happy | Wisdom | Happiness |
Use all your intelligence and experience in managing your own life, employing the tenderness you would expect to find in a being of ideal kindness.
Experience | Intelligence | Kindness | Life | Life | Tenderness | Wisdom |
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Experience | Life | Life | Wisdom |
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 |
New research suggests that the brain influences, and may, in fact, be wired to experience God or deep spirituality. Religious experience often stems from temporal-lobe and limbic system function,, and obsessions (religious and others) stem from too much activity in the anterior cingulated gyrus and basal ganglia.
Experience | God | Research | Spirituality | System | God |
Forgiveness. The experience of reconciliation following upon some breach of trust, marked on the one side by the acknowledgement of wrongdoing and the desire to make amends and on the other side by the capacity to understand and the willingness to resume friendly relations.
Amends | Capacity | Desire | Experience | Forgiveness | Reconciliation | Trust | Following | Understand |