This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Timothy Sprigge, fully Timothy L.S. Sprigge
It is an objective fact whether a certain experience is pleasurable or unpleasurable, and relatedly whether a particular conscious individual is presently experiencing something pleasurable or painful. It is an objective fact, so we may put it, about a subjective state.
Belief | Reflection | World | Think |
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
Margaritae Sorori - A late lark twitters from the quiet skies: And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace. The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-- Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep. So be my passing! My task accomplish'd and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gather'd to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.
Chance | Heart | Man | Praise | Pride | Search | Sound | Worth | Loss |
Waldemar Argow, fully Wendelin Waldemar Wieland Argow
The ideal religion is to establish the proper balance between mind and emotion.
Consecration | Law | Life | Life | Nobility | Present | Redemption | Religion | Sense | Vicissitudes |
In the first petition (which is, Hallowed be thy name) we pray, That God would enable us and others to glorify him in all that whereby he maketh himself known, and that he would dispose all things to his own glory.
The word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.
Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
The variables of quantification, 'something,' 'nothing,' 'everything,' range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.
Change | Experience | Force | History | Knowledge | Mathematics | Science | Truth |
And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here among these dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear—o clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young; but the nature our strain of blood carries is inside there, waiting, like our skeleton.
Lysenko was an aberrant power-hungry nut in a context that brought him to power. Nevertheless, he existed within a philosophical frame we need. For example, the Lysenkoists emphasized traditional, cultural, peasant intelligence as important for agriculture. They made such a fetish of this emphasis that they carried it too far, ultimately suppressing the scientific view held by Vavilov. In our country among our scientists today, it is the other way around, except for the miniature low input sustainable agriculture (LISA) effort and the acknowledged need to develop on-farm research. One could, of course, go overboard in the direction of tradition only. I see it as I travel to various sustainable agriculture gatherings. It is actually a rumble that makes me uneasy. The noise is often from a hard put-down of modern science. When I listen to such put-downs, I remember that in the USSR overemphasis on tradition and cultural wisdom shoved out some good Western science.
Family |
Inquiry in the realm of Basic Natural Law is outside the judicial domain of this or any other kind of social administration anywhere on this globe, in any land, nation, or region.
Existence | Individual | People | Responsibility | Society | Surplus | System | Will | Work | Society |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth; I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; all these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
Cause | Imperfection | Nature | Praise | Time |
Light your lamp and see the five windows in this image through which error enters your soul; as the prophet (Jeremiah) said, ‘Death comes in at the windows... through the eye it looks for strange things as with the other senses. So you must close these windows and open them only when necessary.
Effort | Experience | God | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Lord | Love | Men | Order | People | Praise | Study | God |
An Invocation - We are what suns and winds and waters make us; the mountains are our sponsors, and the rills fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. But where the land is dim from tyranny, there tiny pleasures occupy the place of glories and of duties; as the feet of fabled faeries when the sun goes down trip o’er the grass where wrestlers strove by day. Then Justice, call’d the Eternal One above, is more inconstant than the buoyant form that burst into existence from the froth of ever-varying ocean: what is best then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deform’d. The heart is hardest in the softest climes, the passions flourish, the affections die. O thou vast tablet of these awful truths, that fillest all the space between the seas, spreading from Venice’s deserted courts to the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole, what lifts thee up? What shakes thee? ’t is the breath of God. Awake, ye nations! spring to life! Let the last work of his right hand appear fresh with his image, Man.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Try to imagine a culture in which no one has ever "looked up" anything. In a primary oral culture, the expression "to look up something" is an empty phrase: it would have no conceivable meaning.
Alienation | Consciousness | Good | Need | Nothing | Praise | Writing | Understand |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Make yourself available for success, and know and trust in an invisible force that's all-providing.