This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The learning autobiography... is a reflective document that provides an overview of significant aspects of your educational, personal, and professional life. It demonstrates your ability to integrate the experiences of your life into a lifelong learning process; that is, it represents the ways you've assigned meaning to your own life's story.
James Fitzjames Stephen, fully Sir James Fitzjames Stephen
Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul.
Anticipation | Opinion |
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Unless we first permeate ourselves with the realization that only through the artistic can we penetrate into the realm of truth, there can be no question of acquiring a real understanding of the supersensible world in accordance with the present age of the conscious soul.
Understanding | World |
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Knowledge of life in the astral world leads us to a conclusion of fundamental importance, namely that the physical world is the product of the astral world.
Man | Perception | Soul | World |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
Take provisions for your long way, O wise man! Remove the heaviness of sleep from your heart, O invited guest! Set your baggage in order for departure, O sojourner! The morning tide is night at hand, O wayfarer; why do you sleep? Arise and prepare yourself, O mariner who is to voyage on the sea! Arise and make ready the tackle of your ship, for you do not know at what hour the wind will carry you out! Honor flees away from before the man that runs after it; but he who flees from it, the same will it hunt down, and to all men become a herald of his humility.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
No man has been entrusted with great things without having first been tried in small ones.
Consolation | Receive |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
The soul is drawing nearer to Him, and so she has greater experience within herself of the void of God, of very heavy darkness, and of spiritual fire which dries up and purges her, so that thus purified she may be united with Him.
Body | Contemplation | Frailties | Freedom | God | Labor | Sense | Soul | Spirit | God | Contemplation |
Let him never cease from prayer who has once begun it, be his life ever so wicked, for prayer is the way to amend it, and without prayer such amendment will be much more difficult.
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
It was because it was easier to blame me, ... You know, 'Why is he rocking the boat?' In those days there was a lot of that stuff. He was asking for it. He did it on purpose. He was begging for it. It was just conventional blaming-the-victim stuff. I don't like the term 'victim' when applied to myself. Certainly I felt the guilt burden had shifted from the people doing the violence to the person on the receiving end of the violence.
Chance | Childhood | Experience | Meaning | Past | People | Present | Sense | Loss | Old |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry.
Anticipation | Change | Happy |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is so dressed.
Anticipation | Mind |
Of the size of a thumb, but brilliant, like the sun, the jiva possesses both volition and egoism. It is endowed with the qualities of both buddhi and Atman. Therefore it is seen as another entity, inferior and small as the point of a goad.
May the sun, at the commencement of yoga, join our minds and other organs to the Supreme Self so that we may attain the Knowledge of Reality. May He, also, support the body, the highest material entity, through the powers of the deities who control the senses.
It is the Supreme Brahman alone untouched by phenomena that is proclaimed in the Upanishads. In It is established the triad of the enjoyer, the object and the Lord who is the Controller. This Brahman is the immutable foundation; It is imperishable. The sages, having realized Brahman to be the essence of phenomena, become devoted to Him. Completely merged in Brahman, they attain freedom from rebirth.
Although he Bertrand Russell suffered unpopularity in some quarters for his role as a political dissenter, he enjoyed that role immensely. There was more than a touch of exhibitionism in the riskless sit-downs of his last years when he made well-publicized gestures to ‘Ban the Bomb’ that were as futile as they were ill-advised. I once wondered aloud to him whether his temperamental bias toward nonconformity and dissent was an expression not so much of intellectual courage as of the aristocrat’s disdain of the commoner and his desire to épater le bourgeois. He replied with disarming frankness: ‘Hook, I think you have something there…’
Effort |
Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
And so—since the conclusion of your syllogism (viz., that a stone is in no respect a man) is certain—you seem to me earlier to have obscured by your clever explanations the conclusion of my syllogism (a syllogism which is in every respect similar to yours). Hence, I now understand why you said that I have correctly understood but have not paid careful attention. For I correctly understood what you meant when you spoke to me, but I did not pay careful attention to the point you were making, because I did not realize how [what you said] was misleading me.
Blessedness | Darkness | Looks | Lord | Soul |