This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Philosophy | Thought | Wonder | Thought |
“Ends” are mere appearances, landmarks strewn haphazard along a path whose issue is hidden from you.
Ends |
It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.
Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again.
Beauty | Complacency | Confidence | Earth | Enemy | Envy | Friend | God | Gratitude | Heart | Little | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Malice | Pleasure | Promise | Search | Suspicion | Time | Trust | Wonder | Worship | Wrong | Youth | Beauty | Forgive | Think |
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened.
The wisdom of God says, “I alone can make you understand who you are.” God has willed to make Himself quite recognizable to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from Him with all their heart. There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.
Desire | Enough | God | Heart | Light | Obscurity | Obscurity | Wisdom | God | Understand |
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.
Circumstances | Counsel | Earth | Enough | Giving | Good | Man | Mind | Need | Noise | Wonder |
Each day, say ‘thank you’ for being alive. Each day, take responsibility for your physical performance. Each day, be careful of human nature [your own and others’]. Each day, behold the wonder of Mother nature.
Day | Human nature | Mother | Nature | Responsibility | Wonder |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has any one who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
Cause | Fear | Freedom | Habit | Sincerity | Truth | Wonder |
Dionysius of Halicarnassus NULL
The simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that silence which revealeth in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and, though beyond touch and sight, it more than fills our unseeing minds with splendours of transcendent beauty.
Absolute | Beauty | Darkness | Obscurity | Obscurity | Silence | Truth |
The author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the "innocence of eye" that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new; to see traits and characteristics as though each were new-minted from the hand of God instead of sorting them quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise; to feel situations so immediately and keenly that the word "trite" has hardly any meaning for him; and always to see "the correspondences between things" of which Aristotle spoke two thousand years ago.
Ability | Genius | God | Innocence | Meaning | Means | Wonder | God | Old |
I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything else as well. Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. It is recognition, often of what you are not but might be. It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law. It can seem like truth.
Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him.
It is little wonder that rape is one of the least-reported crimes. Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety.
Crime | Good | Little | Reality | Reputation | Wonder | Victim |