This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I find the religious diversity of the world almost bewilderingly complex. The more I study, the more variegated I find the religious scene to be. I have no reason to urge a thesis of unity among 'the religions of the world'. As a matter of fact, I do not find unity even within one so-called 'religion', let alone among all.... It is not the case that all religions are the same. The historian notes that not even one religion is the same, century after century, or from one country to another, or from village to city.... I repeat: it is not the case that all religions are the same. Moreover, if a philosopher asks (anhistorically) what they all have in common, he or she either finds the answer to be 'nothing', or finds that they all have in common something so much less than each has separately as to distort or to evacuate the individual richness and depth and sometimes grotesqueness of actual religious life.
Dedication | Good | Knowledge | Means | Pleasure | Research | Rule | Sense | Society | Truth | Society | Think |
Love to faults is always blind; Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind. Deceit to secrecy confin’d, Lawful, cautious and refin’d; To anything but interest blind, And forges fetters for the mind.
Benevolence | Burial | Divinity | Enemy | God | Man | Marriage | Men | Murder | Receive | Smile | Time | Will | Wishes | Worship | Friendship | God | Murder | Forgive | Friends |
You throw the sand against the wind And the wind blows it back again.
Benevolence | Smile | Time | Virtue | Virtue |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
Angels | Day | God | Hope | Indignation | Little | Obedience | Rule | God |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.
Enlightenment | Improvement | Mind | Revolution |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.
Curiosity | Fear | Impulse | Insecurity | Knowledge | Man | Order | Understanding |
Man, the most complicated of the animals, has a relatively short gestation period. Beyond that, he will be born, unlike most mammals, in a ridiculously helpless state.
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
It has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement I knew when I was a kid.
Wilfred Trotter, fully Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter
The truly scientific mind is altogether unafraid of the new, and while having no mercy for ideas which have served their turn or shown their uselessness, it will not grudge to any unfamiliar conception its moment of full and friendly attention, hoping to expand rather than to minimize what small core of usefulness it may happen to contain.
Aims | Control | Diversion | Happy | Health | Pain | Wants |
Wilfred Trotter, fully Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter
The first [quality] to be named must always be the power of attention, of giving one's whole mind to the patient without the interposition of anything of oneself. It sounds simple but only the very greatest doctors ever fully attain it. ... The second thing to be striven for is intuition. This sounds an impossibility, for who can control that small quiet monitor? But intuition is only interference from experience stored and not actively recalled. ... The last aptitude I shall mention that must be attained by the good physician is that of handling the sick man's mind.
Doctrine | Observation | Reason |
The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.
Benevolence | Good | Mankind | Melancholy | Question |
Slavery in the Old Testament happens because the strong ones work a monopoly over the weak ones, and eventually exercise control over their bodies. Not only that; in the end the peasants, now become slaves, are grateful for their dependent status:
Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.
I can never see my old friend again— the river Han still streams to the east I might question some old man of his place— river and hills—empty is Tsaichou.
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
If you knew who walked beside you at all times, on the path that you have chosen, you could never experience fear or doubt again.
Energy |