This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.
Beginning | Existence | Experience | Freedom | Knowledge | Light | Object | Pain | Phenomena | Reason | Sense | Solitude | Sorrow | Space | Suppression | Truth | Work |
To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.
Refuse to tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free, joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly and firmly for the port that you intend to make.
Ability | Absolute | Acquaintance | Action | Attention | Delay | Difficulty | Faith | God | Harmony | Man | Means | Mind | Need | Peace | Power | Prayer | Quiet | Struggle | Time | Truth | Will | Trial | God | Child | Think |
Treat the "Because" when you find yourself thinking that your Prayer cannot be answered for any reason whatever - treat that reason. When something says to you that you cannot demonstrate "because" - treat the because. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I have not enough understanding - treat for understanding. When you think, I cannot treat because I have a Headache - treat the headache. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I am full of doubts - treat the doubts. When you think I cannot demonstrate because it is now too late - treat against the time illusion. When you think, I cannot demonstrate in this part of the country - treat against the space illusion. When you think, I cannot demonstrate this thing because of my age - treat your age belief. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because someone else will hinder me - treat the belief in a power other than God. No matter what name the because may give itself, it is still your belief in limitation. Be loyal to God and know that He and He alone has all power. Treat the because.
Freedom | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Life | Life | Means | Need | Power | Present | Prosperity | Right | Soul | Teach | Work | Friends |
The only part of our religion that is real is the part we express in our daily lives. Ideals that we do not act out in practice are mere abstract theories and have no real meaning. Actually, such pretended ideals are a serious detriment, because they drug the soul into a false sense of security. If you want to receive any benefit from your religion you must practice it, and the place to practice it is right here where you are, and the time to do it is now. Divine Love is the only real power. If you can realize this fact even dimly it will begin to heal and harmonize every condition in your life within a few hours. The way to realize this fact is to express it in every word you speak, in every business transaction, in every social activity, and, in fact, in every phase of your life. An early New Thought writer said: "Knead love into the bread you bake; wrap strength and courage in the parcel you tie for the woman with the weary face; hand trust and candor with the coin you pay to the man with the suspicious eyes." This is beautifully said, and it sums up the Practice of the Presence of God.
Absence | Attention | Belief | Change | Desolation | Error | God | Lesson | Means | Mind | Prayer | Thinking | Thought | Will | Words | God | Thought |
We rarely write the names of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon – each unique and surely of crucial significance – as here, honoring them with a capital letter. This may seem trivial, but our dislocation from nature is one of the most serious schisms in our dismembered psyche and probably the most urgent relationship we need to heal.
Action | Consciousness | Energy | Important | Intention | Law | Power |
The master key to life is Unity. All the ills of life are due to inharmony, inharmony is due to a sense of separation and lack of unity. But when we have once more made our unity with All-Good we become bondservants no more to the Law, but rather the Law becomes our servant while we pass into the glorious freedom of the sons of God.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
My mother phones daily to ask, "Did you just try to reach me?" When I reply no, she adds, "So, if you're not too busy, call me while I'm still alive," . . . and hangs up.
Mind |
Since technology, like gas, will fill any conceptual space provided, Leo Marx, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes it as a “hazardous concept” that may “stifle and obfuscate analytic thinking”. He notes, “Because of its peculiar susceptibility to reification, to being endowed with the magical power of an autonomous entity, technology is a major contributant to that gathering sense… of political impotence. The popularity of the belief that technology is the primary force shaping the postmodern world is a measure of our.. neglect of moral and political standards, in making decisive choices about the direction of society.”
Cost | Day | Knowledge | Men | Opposition | Organization | Public | Will |
When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance, the most authority and success, is usually the one who gets our momentary allegiance; and we try to pattern our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.
Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith
"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."
Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |
Ernest Renan, aka Joseph Ernest Renan
He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.
The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic "ideas" [the characterological lie about reality] and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himÂself lost. And this is the simple truth—that to live is to feel oneself lost —he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not really feel himself lost, is without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can't expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party's over and you are with your hostess now. I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.