This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Even scholars of audacious spirit and fine instinct can be obstructed in the interpretation of facts by philosophical prejudices.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow
The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty.
Appreciation | Beauty | Instinct | Nothing | Appreciation |
Two things instruct man about his whole nature; instinct and experience.
Experience | Instinct | Man | Nature |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The instinct of conventionality, horror of uncertainty, and vested interests, all militate against the acceptance of a new idea.
Acceptance | Instinct | Uncertainty |
If sensuality be our only happiness, we ought to envy the brutes; for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.
Envy | Instinct | Reason | Sensuality | Happiness |
C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance.
Instinct | Little | Man | Money | Obsession | Order | People |
C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest....
The instinct for justice, when equipped with all the resources of technology, is capable of laying waste to the earth itself.
Earth | Instinct | Justice | Technology | Waste |
Friendship may indeed come to exist without sensuous liking or comradeship to pave the way; but unless intellectual sympathy and moral appreciation are powerful enough to react on natural instinct and to produce in the end the personal affection which at first was wanting, friendship does not arise.
Appreciation | Enough | Instinct | Sympathy | Friendship | Appreciation |
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
Chastity | Discretion | Fidelity | Instinct | Nobility | Skepticism | Surrender | Youth |
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness…. When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it…. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience.
Change | Children | Experience | Infancy | Instinct | Nothing | Past | Progress |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Day | Eternity | Instinct | Time | Will | Wise | Intellect | Think |
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.
Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things. This is one of the chief elements in what we vaguely call capacity. If you do not dare differ from your associates and teachers you will never be great or your life sublime. You may be the happier as a result, or you may be miserable. Each of us is great insofar as we perceive and act on the infinite possibilities which lie undiscovered and unrecognized about us.
Associates | Bravery | Capacity | Courage | Greatness | Ideas | Life | Life | Will | Old |
The difference between reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.
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 |
A kind of mysterious instinct is supposed to reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the tedious labour of ratiocination. This instinct, for I know not what other name to give it, has been termed common sense, and more frequently, sensibility; and, by a kind of indefeasible right, it has been supposed, for rights of this kind are not easily proved, to reign paramount over the other faculties of the mind, and to be an authority from which there is no appeal.
Authority | Common Sense | Instinct | Mind | Right | Rights | Sense | Sensibility | Soul | Truth |