This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Diana Vreeland, born Diana Dalziel
Your world... you have created it for yourself, it is real to yourself, and therefore real to us... It is for you to discover yourself in a world where, alone and free, you may dream the possible dream: that the wondrous is real, because that is how you feel it to be, how you wish it to be... and how you wish it into being.
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty.
Absolute | Achievement | Justice | Logic | Man | Men | Perfection | Purity | Wisdom |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.
Imperfection | Man | Perfection | Wisdom |
Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL
Trifles make perfection; but perfection is no trifle.
Perfection | Trifles | Wisdom |
Yamada Koun Zenshin, or Koun Yamada or Yamada Roshi
The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.
Character | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose | Zen |
Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson
Old men dream dreams; young men see visions.
Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones
Life itself is the expression of evolution... Everything that exists is merely matter in motion. In the same way, perfection is always a temporary relative motion. Humanity is relative... We are at such a low expression of consciousness that we have not yet seriously studied ourselves... Development is circular... Everything is constantly moving at higher, faster, more refined, complex levels of being... We will be here as quantitative motion until we reach a state of motion that is qualitative, revolutionary. Then we will be somewhere else!
Consciousness | Evolution | Humanity | Life | Life | Perfection | Will | Wisdom |
We are what we are; we cannot be truly other than ourselves. We reach perfection not by copying, much less by aiming at originality, by constantly and steadily working out the life which is common to all, according to the character which God has given us.
Character | Copying | God | Life | Life | Originality | Perfection | Wisdom | God |