This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Fulfillment, Shevek thought, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal, the variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell. Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings. It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The word he used was not wallowing, there being no animals on Anarres to make wallows; it was a compound, meaning literally coating continually and thickly with excrement. The flexibility and precision of Pravic lent itself to the creation of vivid metaphors quite unforeseen by its inventors.
Wise |
Anger is the enemy which takes one’s life. Anger is enemy with the face of a friend. Anger is like a very sharp sword. Anger destroys everything.
Action | Good | Man | Misfortune | Safe | Tragedy | Wise | Misfortune |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
Words of conciliation to the rakshasas will not bring out any good (Soft words will not have any effect on a rakshasa). In the same way one cannot pacify an immensly wealthy person by offering him material things.
Discussion | Men | Wise |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism.
Children | Despair | Evil | Happy | Pain | People | Praise | Treason | Trouble | Happiness |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It is a pity that men cannot usually possess no talent without any desire to put others down.
Mediocrity | Praise |
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
The greater part of the city is built upon a high hill, which rises from an extensive plain, but several of its circles extend for some distance beyond the base of the hill, which is of such a size that the diameter of the city is upward of two miles, so that its circumference becomes about seven. On account of the humped shape of the mountain, however, the diameter of the city is really more than if it were built on a plain.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We must all wait and worry all the time and men.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Young people know love rather than beauty.
Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self and benevolence to men.
Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
All the various kinds of precepts are aimed at helping people follow the rules. People who follow the rules can help maintain order in society and resolve the problems faced by mankind. Thus, the moral precepts are the basis for world peace.
Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
The image of the Buddha on the altar is clearly not a divinity or Sage. It is a representation, an artistic image ... that points back to human who realized the highest wisdom. The Buddha cultivated his nature to an awakened state. The image symbolizes his realization of humanity's potential and aspiration for the highest goodness and compassion. When you bow, symbolically you honor your own potential for great wisdom. Furthermore, bowing is good exercise. It is not idol worship, which is superstitious and passive. Bowing to the Buddha is a practice of a principle; it is dynamic and active.
Anger | Blame | Conduct | Good | Ignorance | Mind | Praise |
Much of the glory and sublimity of truth is connected with its mystery. - To understand everything we must be as God.
Censure | Praise | Superiority | Wisdom |
He that is patient will persevere; and he that perseveres will often have occasion for, as well as trial of patience.
Wise |
Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming
Making friends requires a few measures of gallantry; cultivating true character needs a bit of innocence.