This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A true philosopher makes death his common practice, while he lives, and every day by contemplation strives to separate the soul, far as he can, from off the body.
Body | Contemplation | Day | Death | Practice | Soul | Wisdom | Contemplation |
The light of genius is sometimes so resplendent as to make a man walk through life, amid glory and acclamation; but it burns very dimly and low when carried into “the valley of the shadow of death.” But faith is like the evening star, shining into our souls the more brightly, the deeper is the night of death in which they sink.
Death | Faith | Genius | Glory | Life | Life | Light | Man | Wisdom |
Let’s make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with our neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. to sit on the front steps - whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city - and talk to our neighbors is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch make-believe world in not-quite living color.
Important | Life | Life | Mistake | Wisdom | World | Understand |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint. There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil.
Constraint | Death | Evil | Freedom | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |
Whatever life is (and nobody can define it) it is something forever changing shape, fleeting, escaping us into death. Life is indeed the only thing that can die, and it begins to die as soon as it is born, and never ceases dying. Each of us is constantly experiencing cellular death. For the renewal of our tissues means a corresponding death of them, so that death and rebirth become, biologically, right and left hand of the same thing. All growing is at the same time a dying away from that which lived yesterday.
He who is held in bondage by his senses can never enjoy even a dream of freedom. It is only by complete escape from them that we arrive at a state of freedom from fear.
Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Wisdom |
Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL
We are near waking when we dream that we dream.
Wisdom |