This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence, and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems ! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How e laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.
Comedy | Existence | Life | Life | Little | Men | Space | Struggle | World |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
In this world, aspirants may find enlightenment by two different paths. For the contemplative is the path of knowledge: for the active is the path of selfless action. Nobody can become perfect by merely ceasing to act. In fact, nobody can ever rest from his activity even for a moment.
Action | Enlightenment | Knowledge | Rest | World |
Moderation must not claim the merit of combating and conquering ambition; for they can never exist in the same subject. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul; ambition its activity and ardor.
Ambition | Merit | Moderation | Sloth | Soul | Moderation | Ambition |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Mere customary life (the watch wound up and going on of itself) is that which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition, for which there remains only a formal duration; in which the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of life are out of the question - a merely external sensuous existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object.
Custom | Death | Existence | Life | Life | Object | Opposition | Question |
Life is a short day; but it is a working-day. Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good.
Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
Love is the most freely willed of any activity of which we are able to think.
Love |
The elusive nature of a concrete, permanent, unchanging self is quite a hopeful observation. It means that you can stop taking yourself so damn seriously and get out from under the pressures of having the details of your personal life be central to the operating of the universe. By recognizing and letting go of selfing impulses, we accord the universe a little more room to make things happen. Since we are folded into the universe and participate in its unfolding, it will deter in the face of too much self-centered, self-indulgent, self-critical, self-insecure, self-anxious activity on our part, and arrange for the dream world of our self-oriented thinking to look and feel only too real.
Life | Life | Little | Means | Nature | Observation | Self | Thinking | Universe | Will | World |
To live is to feel ourselves fatally obliged to exercise our liberty, to decide what we are going to be in this world. Not for a single moment is our activity of decision allowed to rest. Even when in desperation we abandon ourselves to whatever may happen, we have decided not to decide.
Decision | Desperation | Liberty | Rest | World |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality.
Max Weber, formally Maximilian Carl Emil Weber
To attain... self confidence, intense worldly activity is recommended as the most suitable means. It and it alone disperses religious doubts and gives the certainty of grace.. The moral conduct of the average man was thus deprived of its planless and unsystematic character and subjected to a consistent method for conduct as a whole.
Character | Conduct | Confidence | Grace | Man | Means | Method | Self |
To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
When attention is not focused on a goal, the mind typically begins to be filled by disjointed and depressing thoughts. The normal condition of the mind is chaos. Only when involved in a goal-directed activity does it acquire order and positive moods... Boredom directs us to seek new challenges, while anxiety urges us to develop new skills; the net result is that, in order to avoid such negative feelings, a person is forded to grow in complexity.
Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses... on your powers, instead of your problems.
The great make us feel, first of all, the indifference of circumstances. They call into activity the higher perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their objects everywhere; only the low habits need palaces and banquets.
Circumstances | Comfort | Indifference | Luxury | Need |