This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives; it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.
Future | Hypothesis | Ignorance | Imagination | Man | Mind | Risk | Wisdom |
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable.
Events | Experience | Future | Inevitable | Past | Wisdom |
Viewing health as something to achieve gives rise to effort and striving, which create stress. And this can interfere with the natural healing tendencies already present within us. The meditative traditions see things differently; they regard health as intrinsic to our nature, and thus already fully present within us... Dis-ease results from a loss of connection with our intrinsic health, caused by ignorance, distraction or confusion.
Effort | Health | Ignorance | Nature | Present | Regard | Wisdom | Loss |
Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
We need to find a form of life that is valuable in itself. What can make a life meaningful? Candidates for this role need to be worthwhile in themselves and not just means to future ends. They need to treat each human life as an autonomous being-for-itself, not merely a being-in-itself to serve some cause beyond it. They need to satisfy our aesthetic and ethical needs, as being both tied to the present moment and existing across time. And there is no reason why such meaning should not be found in this life and not only in a supposed life to come.
Aesthetic | Cause | Ends | Future | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Need | Present | Reason | Time |
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The man whom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his troubles under the friendly shade of every tree, and may experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.
Duty | Experience | Happy | Luxury | Man | Public | Riches | Troubles | Wisdom | Riches |
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Duty |
Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
You are a distinctive and individual expression of a Creative Force. You are not a blueprint or a carbon copy or a ditto of anyone past, present or future. You are you and there is no one quite like you in the world.
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
The future is like heaven--everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
Things reduced to act in time, are known by us successively in time, but by God are known in eternity, which is above time. Whence to us they cannot be certain, forasmuch as we know future contingent things as such; but they are certain to God alone, whose understanding is in eternity above time.
Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
Those even who persecuted Christ or His followers, whom they considered it their duty to persecute, are said to have sinned in action; but they would have committed a graver fault if, contrary to their conscience, they had spared them.
Action | Conscience | Duty | Fault | Fault |