This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
He who beholds in all beings in the self and the self in all beings, he never turns away from it. When to a man who understands, the self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?
Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke
When a person who was self conscious only, enters into cosmic consciousness - he knows without learning certain things... that the universe is not a dead machine but a living presence... that in its essence and tendency it is infinitely good... that individual existence is continuous beyond what is called death.
Character | Consciousness | Death | Existence | Good | Individual | Learning | Self | Universe |
I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth.
Character | Earth | Expectation | Experience | Heaven | Love | Soul | Expectation | Friends |
In love one has need of being believed, in friendship of being understood.
Character | Love | Need | Friendship |
Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun
The ability to make love frivolously is the thing which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.
We never love heartily but once, and that is the first time we love.
Andrei Bitov, fully Andrei Georgiyevich Bitov
Life has neither material nor idealistic secrecy or mystery about it. Life is equal to itself only, hence perceiving its meaning is out of the question... The exaggeration of our mental abilities has given rise to what we perceive as “the problem” of discerning life’s purpose... If it is beyond our powers to disembowel love and beauty - we can only ravish them - it means that they are given to us not for cognition but for reflection. Similarly, the freedom of choice granted to man, a freedom denied the rest of the living species, is man’s task, a duty to exercise and fulfill, not merely an opportune option.
Beauty | Character | Choice | Duty | Exaggeration | Freedom | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Means | Mystery | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Reflection | Rest | Secrecy | Beauty |
Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders.
The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
Character | Love | Personality | Will |