This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock
“See,” one cried with his arm extended, “there is lightning in yon sky.” (I was the lightning and that my cue for it): “God help all the poor souls at sea to-night!” Then a woman cried, “Look! Look! a boat upon the reef!” And as she said it I had to rush round and work the boat to make it go up and down properly. Then there was more lightning, and some one screamed out, “Look! See! there’s a woman in the boat!”
Little | Question | Reality | Old | Understand |
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies.
Judgment | Philosophy | Promise | Reality | Reason | Resignation | Thought | World | Thought |
Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL
There remains the fourth division of the cosmos, which is both by nature altogether fiery itself, and bestows a healthful and lifegiving heat upon all other substances. In this way the conclusion is reached that, since all the divisions of the cosmos are maintained by heat, the long-continued preservation of the cosmos itself is also due to a like and equivalent principle, all the more so as we are to understand that in the intermingling of this hot and fiery element with every organism, the power to generate, and the cause of production, are resident in that element from which all animate things, and things whose roots are contained in the earth, necessarily derive their birth and increase. [Cicero]
There might finally emerge a human animal of rare sensitivity whose curiosity could sense the existence of environments no longer physical, where the adaption required of all the species was a subtle change of consciousness.
Adventure | Church | Conquest | Man | Politics | Public | Reality | Search | Will | World | Think |
Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White
The world is beautiful if you are beautiful.
Reality |
Nothing we ever imagined is beyond our powers, only beyond our present self-knowledge.
Around us, life bursts with miracles--a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.
Blame | Conduct | Practice | Reality | Will | Work | World |
When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy and lightness.
Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice DEEP LOOKING directed toward the other person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. That is the message of the Buddha. --
Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.
For peoples, generally, their story of the universe and the human role within the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. Only through this story of how the Universe came to be in the beginning and how it came to be as it is does a person come to appreciate the meaning of life or to derive the psychic energy needed to deal effectively with those crisis moments that occur in the life of the individual and in the life of the society. Such a story communicates the most sacred of mysteries. Our story not only interprets the past, it also guides and inspires our shaping of the future.
We need merely understand that the evolutionary process is neither random nor determined but creative. It follows the general pattern of all creativity. While there is no way of fully understanding the origin moment of the universe we can appreciate the direction of evolution in its larger arc of development as moving from lesser to great complexity in structure and from lesser to greater modes of consciousness. We can also understand the governing principles of evolution in terms of its three movements toward differentiation, inner spontaneity, and comprehensive bonding.
Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!
Ideals | Perfection | Reality | Will | World |
Behold the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet your heavenly Father careth for them. He expatiates on a single flower, and draws from it the delightful argument of confidence in God. He gives us to see that taste may be combined with piety, and that the same heart may be occupied with all that is serious in the contemplations of religion, and be at the same time alive to the charms and the loveliness of nature.
Character | Day | Destiny | Illusion | Reality | Religion | Sentiment | Will |