This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin
Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
Language |
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
Language |
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man are being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. Although, in daily life, we do not always distinguish these words, we should do so consistently and thus deepen our understanding of our human predicament.
Distinguish | Glory | Language | Loneliness | Man | Pain | Solitude | Understanding |
Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
Poetry is a separate language, or more specifically, a language within a language.
Language |
True love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny… Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their dreams, that makes cowards of us all… Wherever your heart is, that is where you will find your treasure… Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.
Heart | Language | Love | Man | People | Soul | Will | World |
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose language was mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her that it was the symbolic language of relationships. And relationships, he had told her, contained the essential meaning of life.
Father | Language | Mathematics | Meaning | Music |
At that moment it seemed to him that time stood still and the soul of the world surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke. The language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen. The omen he had been awaiting without even knowing he was for all his life. The omen he sought to find in his sheep and in his books. In the crystals and in the silence of the desert… It was the pure language of the world. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life. And that, with no need for words she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it, than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way never learned the universal language. Because when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you. Whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love and makes a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.
Dreams | Earth | Force | Future | Important | Knowing | Language | Love | Need | Parents | Past | People | Silence | Soul | Time | Understanding | Universe | Woman | Words | World | Understand |
Reading does not consist merely of decoding the written word or language; rather, it is preceded by and intertwined with knowledge of the world. Language and reality are dynamically interconnected. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text implies perceiving the relationship between text and context.
Knowledge | Language | Reading | Reality | Relationship | Understanding |
Dream and love are just words - until you decide to experience them… Dreaming is very pleasant as long as you are not forced to put your dreams into practice. That way, we avoid all the risks, frustrations and difficulties, and when we are old, we can always blame other people - preferably our parents, our spouses or our children - for our failure to realize our dreams… Dreams are the language of God… Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body. The pleasure of the search and of adventure feeds our dreams… Hurry up: your dreams are waiting for you, but they will not wait forever.
Adventure | Blame | Children | Dreams | Experience | Failure | Hurry | Language | Love | People | Pleasure | Search | Soul | Waiting | Will | Words | Failure |
I learned something recently: our true friends are those are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with the sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives. When things were bad last year, various people I had never ever seen before turned up to ‘console’ me. I hate that… I learned that the search for God is a Dark Night, that Faith is a Dark Night. And that’s hardly a surprise really, because for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith… I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald.
Day | Faith | God | Good | Hate | Language | People | Search | Soul | Suffering | World | God | Friends | Understand |
Percy W. Bridgman, fully Percy Williams Bridgman
On careful examination the physicist finds that in the sense in which he uses language no meaning at all can be attached to a physical concept which cannot ultimately be described in terms of some sort of measurement. A body has position only in so far as its position can be measured; if a position cannot in principle be measured, the concept of position applied to the body is meaningless, or in other words, a position of the body does not exist. Hence if both the position and velocity of electron cannot in principle be measured, the electron cannot have the same position and velocity; position and velocity as expressions of properties which an electron can simultaneously have are meaningless.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
For the social ecologist language is not "communication." It is not just "message." It is substance. It is the cement that holds humanity together. It creates community and communication. ...Social ecologists need not be "great" writers; but they have to be respectful writers, caring writers.
Pierre Trudeau, aka Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fully Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau
Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens.
Language |
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
Such is the advantage of a well-constructed language that its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound theories.
Language |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
Dear young people of every language and culture, a high and exhilarating task awaits you: that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of life, with respect for everyone. Become craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters — members all of the same family — are able at last to live in peace.
Family | Language | Love | Men | Peace | People | Respect | Respect |
Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honor, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon.
That words, indeed, are not otherwise valuable than as subservient to things, must surely be acknowledged by every liberal mind, and will alone be disputed by him who has spent the prime of his life, and consumed the vigour of his understanding, in verbal criticisms and grammatical trifles. And, if this is the case, every lover of truth will only study a language for the purpose of procuring the wisdom it contains; and will doubtless wish to make his native language the vehicle of it to others. For, since all truth is eternal, its nature can never be altered by transposition, though by this means its dress may be varied, and become less elegant and refined. Perhaps even this inconvenience may be remedied by sedulous cultivation; at least, the particular inability of some, ought not to discourage the well-meant endeavours of others. Whoever reads the lives of the ancient Heroes of Philosophy, must be convinced that they studied things more than words, and that Truth alone was the ultimate object of their search; and he who wishes to emulate their glory and participate their wisdom, will study their doctrines more than their language, and value the depth of their understandings far beyond the elegance of their composition. The native charms of Truth will ever be sufficient to allure the truly philosophic mind; and he who has once discovered her retreats will surely endeavour to fix a mark by which they may be detected by others.
Elegance | Glory | Language | Means | Nature | Object | Purpose | Purpose | Study | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Wishes | Value |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
For, by your research, your unveiling of the secrets of nature, and your teaching of men to direct the forces of nature toward their own welfare, you preach at the same time, in the language of figures, formulae and discoveries, the inexpressible harmony of the work of an all-wise God. In fact, according to the measure of its progress, and contrary to affirmations advanced in the past, true science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree-as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science. We would even say that from this progressive discovery of God, which is realized in the increase of knowledge, there flow benefits not only for the scientist himself when he reflects as a philosopher-and how can he escape such reflection?-but also for those who share in these new discoveries or make them the object of their own considerations. Genuine philosophers profit from these discoveries in a very special way, because when they take these scientific conquests as the basis for their rational speculations, their conclusions thereby acquire greater certainty, while they are provided with clearer illustrations in the midst of possible shadows and more convincing assistance in establishing an ever more satisfying response to difficulties and objections.
Discovery | God | Harmony | Language | Men | Nature | Object | Science | Waiting | Work | Discovery | God |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
On the other hand, how different and much more faithful a reflection of limitless visions is the language of an outstanding modern scientist, Sir Edmund Whittaker, member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, when he speaks of the above-mentioned inquiries into the age of the world: "These different calculations point to the conclusion that there was a time, some nine or ten billion years ago, prior to which the cosmos, if it existed, existed in a form totally different from anything we know, and this form constitutes the very last limit of science. We refer to it perhaps not improperly as creation. It provides a unifying background, suggested by geological evidence, for that explanation of the world according to which every organism existing on the earth had a beginning in time. Were this conclusion to be confirmed by future research, it might well be considered as the most outstanding discovery of our times, since it represents a fundamental change in the scientific conception of the universe, similar to the one brought about four centuries ago by Copernicus."
Age | Beginning | Change | Discovery | Earth | Future | Language | Reflection | World | Discovery |