This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To be human is to suffer loss. To lose it to grieve. To grieve is to heal. Grace and power to you in leaning in to and moving through that painful process.
What a pity human beings can't exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow's.
Just as education without humanity is the most dangerous thing in the world, so education in love, human understanding and cooperation is the greatest hope of the world.
Cooperation | Education | Hope | Humanity | Love | Understanding | Wisdom | World |
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
Awareness | Conscience | Destiny | Difficulty | Isolation | Order | Rites | Silence | Solitude | Wisdom | Awareness |
Alfred de Musset, fully Alfred Louis Charles de Musset
Perfection does not exist. To understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.
Desire | Wisdom | Understand |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Mankind must not be governed with too much severity; we ought to make a prudent use of the means which nature has given us to conduct them. If we inquire into the cause of all human corruptions, we shall find that they proceed form the impunity of criminals, and not from the moderation of punishments.
Cause | Conduct | Mankind | Means | Moderation | Nature | Wisdom | Moderation |
Man can be defined as a being born to transcend himself. And the meaning of human life resides in man’s seeking to become what he was, is and will be eternally in God... Man is the eye through which God knows Himself in His creation, through which God sees and reflects upon His own Splendor. The supreme goal of life is the attainment of this state of awareness of being the eye of which God is the light.
Attainment | Awareness | God | Life | Life | Light | Man | Meaning | Will | Wisdom | God | Awareness |
As ages roll on there is doubtless a progression in human nature. The intellectual comes to rule the physical, and the moral claims to subordinate both. It is no longer strength of body that prevails, but strength of mind; while the law of God proclaims itself superior to both.
Body | God | Human nature | Law | Mind | Nature | Rule | Strength | Wisdom | God |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
There are questions whose truth or untruth cannot be decided by man; all the supreme questions, all the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason... To grasp the limits of reason - only this is true philosophy.
Man | Philosophy | Problems | Reason | Truth | Wisdom | Value |
Modern technology has lost its magic. No longer do people stand in awe, thrilled by the onward rush of science, the promise of a new day. Instead, the new is suspect. It arouses our hostility as much as it used to excite our fancy. With each breakthrough there are recurrent fears and suspicion. How will the advance further pollute our lives; modern technology is not merely what it first appears to be. Behind the whitecoats, the disarming jargon, the elaborate instrumentation, and a the core of what has often seemed an automatic process, one finds what Dorothy found in Oz: modern technology is human after all.
Awe | Day | Magic | People | Promise | Science | Suspicion | Technology | Will | Wisdom |
Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL
We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!
Raimon Panikkar, fully Raimon Panikkar-Alemany
To look for a purpose in Life outside Life itself amounts to killing Life. Reason is given by Life, not vice versa. Life is prior to meaning... Human life is joyful interrogation. Any answer is blasphemy.
Blasphemy | Life | Life | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Wisdom | Vice |
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.
Life | Life | Little | Nations | Proverbs | Time | Wisdom | Learn |
Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer
The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance - these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, even more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.
Association | Knowledge | Men | Society | Wisdom | World | Association |