This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The man whom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his troubles under the friendly shade of every tree, and may experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.
Duty | Experience | Happy | Luxury | Man | Public | Riches | Troubles | Wisdom | Riches |
We live in a biochemical, neurophysiological, resonant quantum soup. If this is true, the responsibility for what we have for our inner life is enormous, and extends far beyond one’s own personal and spiritual development. Whatever our inner experience might be in terms of love and passion, hate and greed, abundance and longing, or any other human qualities may well not be ours alone.
Abundance | Experience | Greed | Hate | Life | Life | Longing | Love | Passion | Qualities | Responsibility |
When we contemplate the meaning of life, we are thinking on the plane of action, of practical decisions and choices we have to make. No matter what the metaphysicians say about free will, we have to experience the world as one with choices and dilemmas and we have to resolve them as beings able to think them through and make decisions
Action | Experience | Free will | Life | Life | Meaning | Thinking | Will | World | Think |
John M. Wilson, fully John Moulder Wilson
Are you willing to think? Consider carefully, for the answer to that question will largely determine your success or failure in life. If you develop your judgment, use it. Exercise your power of judgment as often as you can, for the first rule of good judgment is practice. The functions of your mind, no less than the muscles of your body, receive their strength through repeated use.
Body | Failure | Good | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Power | Practice | Question | Receive | Rule | Strength | Success | Will | Wisdom | Failure |
A theology - any theology - not based on spiritual experience is mere panting - religious breathlessness.
Experience | Theology |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Just as life is defined as biological change and death as its lack, so meaning in life is characterized by the application of stable patterns to changing circumstances and the replacing of old patterns of understanding with new and exploratory ones. Meaning is found in the losing of it, the searching after it, and in the finding of it again. The meaning in your life is in flux and is to be found in the flux (the flow) of meaning, which is therefore itself a source of meaning in your life. All this does require, however, the developing of a tolerance for ambiguity, of a willingness to accept the inevitability of change and the precariousness of your present vision, and of an openness to the unending richness of your experience of the world in its manifold variety and diversity.
Ambiguity | Change | Circumstances | Death | Diversity | Experience | Life | Life | Meaning | Openness | Present | Understanding | Vision | World | Old |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Values do not exist apart from our experience of them… what is not an experience cannot be of intrinsic value… intrinsic values, or immediate values, are subjective, or dependent on the state of mind of the beholder.
Experience | Mind |
R. L. Bruckberger, fully Raymond Léopold Bruckberger
If the Day of Judgment came tomorrow, and God asked us what we had made of His revelation, of His grace and our freedom… we would be hard put to it to explain the advantages of a machine civilization whose highest efficiency is used for murder and slavery.
Civilization | Day | Efficiency | Freedom | God | Grace | Judgment | Murder | Revelation | Slavery | Tomorrow | God | Murder |
It was for the sake of security that the people of ancient ties turned to the Baals and other idols. Today, our oppressors turn to money and military power and to the so-called security forces. But their security is insecurity. We experience their security as intimidation and repression, terror, rape and murder. Those who turn to the idols for security demand our insecurity as the price that must be paid.
Experience | Insecurity | Intimidation | Money | Murder | People | Power | Price | Security | Terror |
There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature diverse seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which being cherished, excited, and quickened by good culture, do by common experience thrust out flowers very lovely, and yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness.
Experience | Good | Human nature | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Virtue | Virtue |
Every new experience is a new opportunity of knowing God. Every new experience is like a jewel set into the texture of our life, on which God shines and makes interpretation and revelation of Himself.
Experience | God | Knowing | Life | Life | Opportunity | Revelation | God |
Seymour Cohen, fully Seymour Jay Cohen
The starting point of religious experience is wonder.
Experience | Wonder |
The opportunity offered by a shrinking economy to experience simple pleasures might be one of God’s better gifts to this generation.
Better | Experience | God | Opportunity |
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
Art | Beauty | Existence | Experience | Fear | Good | Knowledge | Man | Mystery | Reason | Religion | Science | Sense | Wonder | Art |
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.
Art | Experience | Fear | Good | Mystery | Religion | Science | Wonder | Art |