This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment, to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.
Contentment | Life | Life | Philosophy |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Contentment is not satisfaction. It is the grateful, faithful, fruitful use of what we have, little, or much. It is to take the cup of Providence, and call upon the name of the Lord. What the cup contains is its contents. To get all there is in the cup is the act and art of contentment. Not to drink because one has but half a cup, or because one does not like its flavor, or because some one else has silver to one's own glass, is to lose the contents; and that is the penalty, if not the meaning of discontent. No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment,--to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.
Art | Contentment | Little | Lord | Meaning | Philosophy | Providence | Art |
The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.
Creed | Dogma | Future | Illusion | Life | Life | Mankind | Philosophy | Poetry | Race | Religion | Rest | Science | Time | Tradition | Will | World |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Sacred theology is superior to philosophy, both theoretically and practically; theoretically, because it is more perfect knowledge of God and His creatures; practically, because moral philosophy is insufficient to direct man to God as his last end.
God | Knowledge | Man | Philosophy | Sacred | Theology | God |
Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.
Happy | Heaven | Philosophy | Religion | Happiness |
The difference between gossip and philosophy lies only in one's way of taking a fact.
Philosophy | Gossip |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
We should approach our nearest Problem or duty with concentrated energy and execute it to perfection. This should be our philosophy of life.
Duty | Energy | Life | Life | Perfection | Philosophy |
Knowledge, wisdom, erudition, arts, and elegance, what are they, but the mere trappings of the mind, if they do not serve to increase the happiness of the possessor? A mind rightly instituted in the school of philosophy, acquires at once the stability of the oak, and the flexibility of the osier. Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.
Elegance | Erudition | Flexibility | Happy | Knowledge | Mankind | Mind | Philosophy | Present | Wisdom | Talent | Flexibility | Happiness |
Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
Life | Life | Philosophy |
[In the cave allegory] those whose who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.
Difficulty | Duty | Light | Man | Nothing | Philosophy | Regard | Time | Truth | Will |
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
Philosophy | Wonder |
The philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.
Philosophy | Universe | Waiting |
Robert Bellah, fully Robert Neelly Bellah
That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to humankind, but it is preached incessantly by every American television set.
Philosophy | Religion | Television | Happiness |
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
The heart of Religion is not an opinion about God, such as philosophy might reach as the conclusion of an argument; it is a personal relation with God.
Psychiatry’s chief contribution to philosophy is the discovery that the toilet is the seat of the soul.
Discovery | Philosophy | Soul | Discovery |
What is Philosophy but a continual battle against Custom?
Battle | Custom | Philosophy |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Philosopher, lover of wisdom, that is to say, of truth. All philosophers have had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity who has not given mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral truths. They have all contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; but natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of life, that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken centuries to learn a part of nature’s laws. One day was sufficient for a wise man to learn the duties of man.
Antiquity | Character | Conduct | Day | Life | Life | Little | Man | Mankind | Nature | Need | Philosophy | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Wise | Learn |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy extinguishes them.
Philosophy | Superstition | World |