This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The only thing of value in a man is the soul. That is why it is the soul that is given everlasting life, either in the Land of the Sky or in the Underworld. The soul is man’s greatest power; it is the soul that makes us human, but how it does so we do not know. Our flesh and blood, our body, is nothing but an envelope about our vital power.
Body | Character | Land | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Power | Soul | Value |
Nature... is frugal in her operations and will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a name, these are complex objective stuff out of which my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go through a long education of the eye and ear before they can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every perception is an acquired perception.
Character | Education | Experience | Habit | Instinct | Knowledge | Nature | Perception | Present | Unity | Will |
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
Trader Horn, fully Alfred Aloysius "Trader" Horn, born Alfred Aloysius Smith, alias Zambezi Jack
The first thing education teaches you is to walk alone.
Knowledge is a function of being; but the thing known is independent of the mode and nature of the knower.
Fear of life is one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn’t reason that will ever do it. Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
Character | Enough | Fear | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Suicide | Thought | Will | Thought |
All relationship is based on the image that you have built around another and the other has built about you... What is relationship? If the image has come to an end, which is the content of consciousness that makes up your consciousness, when the various images you have about yourself, about everything, come to an end, then what is the relationship between you and her? Then is there an observer observing apart from the thing it has observed? Or is it a total movement of love in relationship? Are you getting it? So love is a movement in relationship in which the observer is not.
Character | Consciousness | Love | Relationship |
Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
It is a wretched thing to lean on the reputation of others, lest the pillars being withdrawn the roof should fall in ruins.
Character | Reputation |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
A man could not have anything upon his conscience if God did not exist, for the relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even the least thing upon one’s conscience, because one is immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God.
Character | Conscience | God | Individual | Man | Relationship | God |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
Walter Kerr, fully Walter Francis Kerr
The work we are doing is more or less the work we meant to do in life [but] it does not yield us the feeling of accomplishment we had expected... If I were required to put into a single sentence my own explanation of the state of our hearts, heads, and nerves, I would do it this way: we are vaguely wretched because we are leading half-lives, half-heartedly, and with only one-half of our minds actively, engaged in making contact with the universe about us.
Accomplishment | Character | Life | Life | Universe | Work |
Eleazar Rokeach, Eleazor ben Judah ben Kalonymus, aka Eleazar of Worms
The most beautiful thing a man can do is to forgive.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?... Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest on futilities.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as to a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.
Action | Character | God | Mind | Truth | Understanding | Wishes | God | Understand |
Wilma Mankiller, fully Wilma Pearl Mankiller
The meaning of life is to live in balance and harmony with every other living thing in creation. We must all strive to understand the interconnectedness of all living things and accept our individual role in the protection and support of other life forms on earth. We must also understand our own insignificance in the totality of things.
Balance | Character | Earth | Harmony | Individual | Insignificance | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |