This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.
Appearance | Virtue | Virtue | Words |
Great men are never the promoters of absolute and immutable truths. Each great man belongs to his time and can come only at his proper moment, in the sense that there is a necessary and ordered sequence in the appearance of scientific discoveries.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The noble person tries to create harmony in the human heart by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails and the people’s minds are led toward the right ideas and aspirations, we may see the appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowing of character... The poem gives expression to our heart, the song gives expression to our voice, and the dance gives expression to our movements. these three arts take their rise from the human soul, and then are given further expressions by means of musical instruments.
Appearance | Character | Culture | Harmony | Heart | Human nature | Ideas | Means | Music | Nature | People | Perfection | Right | Soul | Poem |
The world more often rewards the appearance of merit than merit itself.
Appearance | Merit | World |
Truth does not do so much good in the world as the appearance of it does evil.
Appearance | Evil | Good | Truth | World |
Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Appearance | Appetite | Curiosity | Object | Restlessness |
Be not deceived with the first appearance of things, for show is not substance.
With the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty; that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will. We like them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even with the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.
Action | Appearance | Cause | Credit | Duty | Enough | Impulse | Love | Nothing | Sacrifice | Self | Self-love | Will |
For there is not the smallest contradiction in saying that a thing in appearance (belonging to the world of sense) is subject to certain laws of which the very same as a thing or being in itself is independent.
Appearance | Contradiction | Sense | World |
Mankind [is] naturally divided into three sorts; one third of them are animated at the first appearance of danger, and will press forward to meet and examine it; another third are alarmed by it, but will neither advance nor retreat, till they know the nature of it, but stand to meet it. The remaining third will run or fly upon the first thought of it.
Appearance | Danger | Mankind | Nature | Thought | Will | Thought |
John Cage, fully John Milton Cage, Jr.
Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
Appearance | Delay |
The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."
Appearance | Eternity | Experience | Forgiveness | God | Justice | Love | Mind | Mortal | Mystical | Reason | Relationship | Speech | Thought | Time | Unity | Virtue | Virtue | World | Forgiveness | Thought |
Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order in their temper and conduct whose passions are regulated.
Appearance | Beauty | Conduct | Harmony | Love | Meekness | Order | Right | Sound | Temper | Beauty |
The appearance of things changes according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
Appearance | Beauty | Emotions | Magic | Beauty |
Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments: even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression.
Appearance | Despair | Difficulty | Harmony | Individual | Life | Life | Music | Play | Wonder |
The purpose of the spirit in the heart is concealed, and by outer appearance cannot be judged.
Appearance | Heart | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit |
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a man-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making... The boldness can be gauged by the distance between the world of appearance and the conjectured reality, the explanatory hypotheses.
Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction.
Appearance | Conscience | Earth | Evolution | Force | Law | Life | Life | Play | World |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Those who desire to be men in truth, not brutes in the appearance of men, must constantly endeavor to reduce the wants of the body.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Pain, it is true, transmuted, so to say, by its own fiery heat into anger, loses every appearance of depression and feebleness; the angry man makes a show of energy, as the man in a high fever does of natural heat, while, in fact, all this action of soul is but mere diseased palpitation, distention, and inflammation.
Action | Anger | Appearance | Depression | Energy | Man | Pain | Soul |