This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All the wonderful things in life are so simple that one is not aware of their wonder until they are beyond touch. Never have I felt the wonder and beauty and joy of life so keenly as now in my grief that Johnny is not here to enjoy them.
Beauty | Grief | Joy | Life | Life | Wisdom | Wonder | Beauty |
There is one type of feeling which is above all important to foster in childhood. Children have naturally an abundant faculty for wonder and reverence. There are so many books, so many radio and television hours, so many encyclopedias and, alas, so many teachers whose aim is to import knowledge quickly and easily without any element of that faculty which the Greeks said was the beginning of philosophy – Wonder. It is strange that an age which has discovered so many marvels in the universe should be so conspicuously lacking in the sense of wonder.
Age | Beginning | Books | Childhood | Children | Important | Knowledge | Philosophy | Reverence | Sense | Television | Universe | Wisdom | Wonder |
Every affection of the mind that is attended with either pain or pleasure, hope or fear, is the cause of an agitation whose influence extends to the heart, and there induces change from the natural constitution, in the temperature, the pulse and the rest, which impairing all nutrition in its source and abating the powers at large, it is no wonder that various forms of incurable disease in the extremities and in the trunk are the consequence, inasmuch as in such circumstances the whole body labors under the effects of vitiated nutrition and want of native heat.
Agitation | Body | Cause | Change | Circumstances | Disease | Fear | Heart | Hope | Influence | Mind | Pain | Pleasure | Rest | Wisdom | Wonder |
Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"
When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry.
Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman
It’s universally wrong to steal from your neighbor, but once you get the one-to-one level, and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureaucracy, the modern plantation of agro-business, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgment to decide exactly who is stealing from whom. One person’s crime is another person’s profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals and how much.
Business | Capitalism | Crime | Government | Individual | Judgment | Wisdom | Wrong | Government | Value |
Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers. But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother! She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.
Children | Control | Endurance | Father | Mother | Patience | Self | Self-control | Wisdom | Wonder | Instruction |
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
No wonder is greater than any other wonder, and if once explained ceases to be a wonder.
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
Judging only by outer appearances is a mistake, because things are rarely what they seem... Disapproval of a person is disapproval of God. There is a great difference between being judgmental and using good judgment. You have to love each person’s divine essence, but you do not have to like someone’s inappropriate behavior. Wrong judgment impedes your spiritual growth.
Behavior | God | Good | Growth | Judgment | Love | Mistake | Wisdom | Wrong |
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
We have lose the habit of thinking quietly, of trying to know ourselves and our friends, and the world around us, and the God who is above and within us. We are looking in the wrong places for happiness. We are so exclusively occupied with material things and with their accumulation that the higher values are crowded out.