This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understanding as do from these receive into our understanding as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operation within self... These two, I say, vis. external material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.
Character | Enough | Ideas | Knowing | Man | Mind | Nothing | Perception | Receive | Reflection | Self | Sense | Thinking | Understanding |
Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.
Appearance | Character | Dignity | Intelligence | Perseverance | Silence | Wisdom |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Lying is an ugly vice... Since mutual understanding is brought about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word betrays human society. It is the only instrument by means of which our wills and thoughts communicate, it is the interpreter of our soul. If it fails us, we have no more hold on each other, no more knowledge of each other. If it deceives us, it breaks up all our relations and dissolves all the bonds of our society.
Character | Knowledge | Lying | Means | Society | Soul | Ugly | Understanding | Wills | Words |
Perhaps we scarcely notice that in every direction our natural understanding leads us to nothing. We come either to contradiction or to the unknown... We do not think of the growth of a seed in our world in the same way. We cannot imitate growth. Growth is from ‘inside’. Higher dimensions enter our world from inside, from the direction of the most minute.
Character | Contradiction | Growth | Nothing | Understanding | World | Think |
Neil Monro, sometimes wrote under pen name Hugh Foulis
To the acquisition of the rare quality of politeness, so much of the enlightened understanding is necessary that I cannot but consider every book in every science, which tends to make us wiser, and of course better men, as a treatise on a more enlarged system of politeness.
Better | Character | Men | Science | System | Understanding |
When the taste is purified, the morals are not easily corrupted. Whatever injures the body, the morals, or the mind, will lessen or vitiate taste; thus, disorders of the body and violent passions of the mind, will do this, and so will also excessive care or covetousness; but above all, a habit of intemperance, and keeping low company will greatly deprave that which was once a good taste.
Body | Care | Character | Good | Habit | Intemperance | Mind | Taste | Will |
Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purpose as one’s own. When you ask for it back again, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press still further, either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend.
Character | Enemy | Friend | Kindness | Money | Purpose | Purpose |
Nisargadatta Maharaj, fully Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli
By watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
Acceptance | Attention | Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Intention | Life | Life | Mind | Mother | Nature | Understanding | Work | Understand |
If you wish to please people, you must begin by understanding them.
Character | People | Understanding |
Of all vices to take heed of drunkenness; other vices are but fruits of disordered affections - this disorders, nay, banishes reason; other vices but impair the soul - this demolishes her two chief faculties, the understanding and the will; other vices make their own way - this makes way for all vices; he that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.
Character | Reason | Soul | Understanding | Will |
To feel, to feel exquisitely, is the lot of every man; it is the charm that lends a superstitious joy to fear. But to appreciate belongs to the few; to one or two alone, here and there, the blended passion and understanding that constitute in its essence worship.
Character | Fear | Joy | Man | Passion | Understanding | Worship |
When the heart is won, the understanding is easily convinced.
Character | Heart | Understanding |