This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
Judgment | Truth | Understanding | Wisdom | World | Intellect | Understand |
The world of our consciousness consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner ‘state’ in which the thinking comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous - the cosmic times and spaces, for example - whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of the mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one.
Consciousness | Example | Existence | Experience | Mind | Reality | Thinking | Time | Wisdom | World | Think |
The wild is a place to be tamed. It is an arrogant designation of priority - make the world over for humans. Americans, seeing landscape from the beginning as real estate, are scrupulous about dealing in it, and in prosperous areas all over the country, a fierce moral judgment falls on “waste” places, scrubland, even the vacant lots in developments, where the ragweed’s got a good hold. For God’s sake, do something with it! everybody says.
Beginning | God | Good | Judgment | Waste | Wisdom | World |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.
Experience | God | People | Wisdom |
‘The true’, to put it very briefly, is only expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily.
Experience | Right | Thinking | Wisdom |
The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older - that is, the days, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same... In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollection of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly notice at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.
Appearance | Day | Experience | Space | Time | Wisdom | Youth | Youth |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
[Paraphrase] The function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God.
Experience | God | Religion | Wisdom |
Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.
Experience | Understanding | Unique | Wisdom |
Wherever deep experience attains intense expression, there is art.
Art | Experience | Wisdom |
D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another... Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom... The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences... the world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. It can't pigeon-hole a new experience.
Experience | Fear | Freedom | Genius | Laughter | Man | Men | Wisdom | World | Old |
Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov
Even if for every hundred correct things we did we committed ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be - and it will be in the judgment of history - great and invincible; for this is the first time that not a minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real masses, the overwhelming majority of the working people are themselves building a new life and are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization.
Experience | History | Judgment | Life | Life | Majority | Organization | People | Problems | Revolution | Time | Will | Wisdom |
The artist is one to whom all experience is revelation.
Experience | Revelation | Wisdom |
Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions - these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term “experience.”
Abstract | Axioms | Experience | Individual | Language | Race | Unity | Wisdom |
John Lilly, fully John Cunningham Lilly``
In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind. There are no limits.
Experience | Mind | Wisdom |
Waste not your strength trying to push shut doors which God is opening. Neither wear yourself out in keeping open doors which ought to be forever sealed. Some episode in your life, over which you are anxious, is closed. it is in the past. Whatever its memory, you cannot change it. But you can shut the door. Go into some silent place of thought. Test your self-respect. Ask your soul, "Have I emerged from this experience with honor, or if not, can honor be retrieved?" And if your soul answers, "Yes," close then the door to that Past; hang a garland over the portal if you will, but come away without tarrying. The east is aflame with the radiance of the morning, and before you stands many another door, held open by the hand of God.
Change | Experience | God | Honor | Life | Life | Memory | Past | Respect | Self | Soul | Strength | Thought | Waste | Will | Wisdom | God |
Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.
Art | Experience | Life | Life | Wisdom |
On one level, life is the process of seeking out and enjoying experiences - from the transcendent to the tragic. Life has as cyclical pattern of movement and appreciation; even when you’re not doing anything, you’re probably in a situation you sought. On another level, life is the experience of the self’s interaction with the world. The self can be broken down into three main elements and their corresponding activities: first, the heart (knowing compassion, receiving and giving love); second, the intellect (acquiring and digesting information); third, the senses (acting and being acted upon). It is the soul, however, that focuses and inspires all three the soul gives us resilience -an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship... The meaning of life can’t be understood without first looking at the self and its interaction with the world. In effect, this amounts to examining the inner workings of the soul of the universe.
Appreciation | Compassion | Experience | Giving | Heart | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Resilience | Self | Soul | Universe | Wisdom | World | Intellect |