This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To love without criticism is to be betrayed.
Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart.
Character | Heart | Temptation |
The fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes.
Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according tot he predominancy of the element.
Character | Conscience | Destroy |
You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.
The adult world is... built on the shifting grounds of friendship and competition. The double message of this society and economy are to get along and get ahead. We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.
Character | Children | Competition | Goals | Society | World | Friendship | Society |
Love is a conflict between reflexes and reflections.
Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.
Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |
The most destructive criticism is indifference.
Character | Criticism | Indifference |
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Aggression | Character | Love | Man | Method | Retaliation | Revenge |
Your success and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents of life. The great enduring realities are love and service. Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. Resolve to keep happy and your joy in you shall form an invincible host against difficulty.
Character | Difficulty | Happy | Intelligence | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Service | Success | Happiness |
It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters.
Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.
Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticizes us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
Our conscience is a fire within us, and our sins as the fuel; instead of warming, it will scorch us, unless the fuel be removed, or the heat of it allayed by penitential tears.
Character | Conscience | Tears | Will |