This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Susanne Langer, fully Susanne Katherina Langer née Knauth
The continual pursuit of meanings – wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings – is philosophy.
I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Administration | Conduct | Desire | Earth | Friend | Power |
Mahāyāna Religious Ideal "Great Vehicle" NULL
The cause of all suffering is rooted in desire. If the desire is extinguished suffering has no foot hold.
The peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, “Do this”; reason, judgment, prudence say “It is your peril if you do!” One desire fights against another. And so the man is rent asunder. There must be the harmonizing of all the being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
Conscience | Desire | God | Judgment | Life | Life | Man | Passion | Peace | Peril | Prudence | Prudence | Reason | Rest | Spirit | God |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects that they shall be neither able nor disposed to injure you; and this is done by depriving them of all means of injuring you, or by bestowing such benefits upon them that it would not be reasonable for them to desire any change of fortune.
Change | Desire | Fortune | Government | Means |
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
The desire to come together as brothers must not lead to a watering-down or subtracting from the truth. Our dialogue must not weaken our attachment to our faith.
Raisa Orlova, fully Raisa Davydovna Orlova-Kopeleva
Beliefs and convictions reach out from the past, and they cannot be altered by fervent desire alone. They possess their own logic and illogic, their own organic existence, their own rhythm of development.
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women.
Absence | Balance | Day | God | Justice | Men | Order | Peace | War |
Within each heart beats a fervent desire to be needed, desired, and celebrated.
Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer.
Desire | Experience | Fulfillment | Joy | Prayer | Reality | Will |
Hatred is entrenched in human nature. It is as old as man, as old as man’s desire to expunge it. It slumbers in all of us. It can awaken at any time. I am not sure if we can eradicate hate from our hearts, but of this I am certain: It must always be our goal.
Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
The Buddha, that is now “Awakened One,” diagnosed the human condition in the following way. Life is out of balance and characterized by suffering because all things are impermanent, and yet we desire things as if they were permanent. We each view our own self as if it too were permanent and completely independent from our selves, and so we think of our self as competing for those things with other discrete selves. Everything that we desire will ultimately pass away – we cannot hold on to anything in the end, not even our own bodies and minds – so our inappropriate desires are frustrated and we suffer, only to be reborn again into anew life of desire and suffering. To break the cycle of rebirth (samsara), we must overcome our ignorance about the true nature of things, cut the root of desire, and give up attachment to self, for we are anatman, no-self.
Balance | Desire | Ignorance | Life | Life | Nature | Self | Suffering | Will | Following | Think |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
Charity is above all a hymn of love. Real, pure love is the gift of oneself; it is the desire of diffusion and complete donation that is an essential part of goodness.