This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order in their temper and conduct whose passions are regulated.
Appearance | Beauty | Conduct | Harmony | Love | Meekness | Order | Right | Sound | Temper | Beauty |
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.
Good | Heart | Intelligence | Nature | Restraint |
Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the great weakness of human nature.
Human nature | Inconsistency | Mutability | Nature | Temper | Weakness |
Lorenz Oken, born Lorenz Okenfuss
The eye takes a person into the world. The ear brings the world into a human being.
World |
In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snails eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one’s head about.
Extreme | Light | Man | Mystery | Science | Sense | Wonder | Worth |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
The painter who draws by practice and judgment of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror which reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite it without knowledge of the same.
The beautiful! It is beauty seen with the eye of the soul.
The overcoming of private property means the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it means this emancipation precisely because these senses and qualities have become human both subjectively and objectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object derived from and for the human being. The senses have therefore become theoreticians immediately in their practice. They try to relate themselves to their subject matter for its own sake, but the subject matter itself is an objective human relation to itself and to the human being, and vice versa. Need or satisfaction have thus lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.
Means | Nature | Need | Object | Practice | Property | Qualities | Vice |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
What beauty enters through the eye!... Through the window of the eye the soul regards the world's beauty. For the eye endureth the soul the prison of human form. Without the eye that prison were its torment.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
“Take heed how ye hear” is a genuine monition touching happy relations - a real injunction under the law of love. Let us not think it applies only to the way we hear sermons. How do you listen to the conversation of your friends? With half-parted lips ready to break in with your own opinions? With the wandering eye of one evidently uninterested? Is this the love that helps another to be his best? Do you like to be well listened to? Mind, then, the give and take of love, and be a good listener, and for truth’s sake as well as love’s.
Conversation | Good | Happy | Law | Love | Mind | Truth | Think |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Death is a great preacher of deathlessness. The protest of the soul against death, its reversion, its revulsion, is a high instinct of life. Dissatisfaction in his world who satisfieth the desire of every living thing has a grip on the future. As far as this goes, he has the least assurance of immortality who can be best satisfied with eating and drinking and “things”’ he has the surest hope of ongoings and far distances who does not live by brad alone, whose eye is looking over the shoulder of things, whose ear hears mighty waters rolling ever more, who has “hopes naught can satisfy below.” The limits of which death makes us aware, make us aware of life’s limitlessness. The wing cage knows it was meant for an ampler ether and diviner air.
Death | Desire | Future | Hope | Immortality | Instinct | Life | Life | Protest | Soul | World |
Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel
Life’s meaning rests in the eye of the beholder and in our constant desire to approach perfection. Life is so immense and complex that there is no one truth, only the rule of destiny... We do not choose life; life chooses us. Yet we try to follow our destiny, our passion our drive. We must live every minute as if it is our first and our last... The meaning of life lies in our desire to help others... Earthly life is an eternal miracle. In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand.
Desire | Destiny | Eternal | Eternity | Grace | Life | Life | Meaning | Passion | Perfection | Rule | Truth |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
To be organized and efficiently, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one and the same.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same - one in seeing, one is knowing, and one in loving.