This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
Humility collects the soul into a single point by the power of silence. A truly humble man has no desire to be known or admired by others, but wishes to plunge from himself into himself, to become nothing, as if he had never been born. When he is completely hidden to himself in himself, he is completely with God.
Character | Desire | God | Humility | Man | Nothing | Power | Silence | Soul | Wishes |
Genuine self-government is possible only in very small groups, societies on a national or super-national scale will always be ruled by oligarchical minorities, whose members come to power because they have a lust for power.
Anything unforgiven is held in the body, the emotions, the mind, and even the soul. Unreleased, it crystallizes, forming obstructions in the very pathways along which energy must flow. Given enough time to harden, it will result in sickness.
Body | Character | Emotions | Energy | Enough | Mind | Soul | Time | Will |
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Adventure | Change | Character | Daring | Fate | Life | Life | Nothing | Strength | Fate |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
This spectacle of old age would be unendurable if we did not know that our psyche reaches into a region held captive neither by change in time nor by limitation of place. In that form of being our birth is a death and our death is a birth. The scales of the whole hang balanced.
Age | Birth | Change | Character | Death | Old age | Time | Wisdom | Old |
Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us, we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unity of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas and constantly changing scenes.
Adventure | Character | Enough | Ideas | Love | Man | Mediocrity | Men | Money | Power | Religion | Search | Unity | Will |
Self-knowledge is the primary step in conscious evolutionary change. When people confront and integrate their individual fears and limitations, they facilitate the confrontation and integration of our racial, national, and planetary fears. Lasting social change is only possible when individual consciousness has first been changed.
Change | Character | Consciousness | Individual | Integration | Knowledge | People | Self | Self-knowledge |
Those who speak ill of me are really my good friends. When, being slandered, I cherish neither enmity nor preference. There grows within me the power of love and humility, which is born of the Unborn.
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
We still have it in our power to rise above the fears, imagined and real, and to shoulder the great burdens which destiny has placed upon us, not for our country alone, but for the benefit of all the world.
The truth of not-knowing is the only factor from which one can move. The truth of that is stable. A mind that does not know is in a state of learning. The moment I say I have learned, I have stopped learning and that stopping is the stability of division.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves.
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
No man should think that peace comes easily. Peace does not come by merely wanting it, or shouting for it, or marching down Main Street for it. Peace is built brick by brick, mortared by the stubborn effort and the total energy and imagination of able and dedicated men. And it is built in the living faith that, in the end, man can and will master his own destiny.
Character | Destiny | Effort | Energy | Faith | Imagination | Man | Men | Peace | Will | Wisdom | Think |