This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We can end the impossible quest for the perfect structure - the happy family, the completely satisfying marriage, the unbroken friendship. We can find some purpose in the failures, the intimacies that never got off the ground, the possibilities that never took flesh. The soul does not share the spirit’s love of perfection and wholeness, but finds value in fragmentation, incompleteness, and unfulfilled promise.
Family | Happy | Love | Marriage | Perfection | Promise | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Spirit | Wholeness | Value |
To dismiss anyone as valueless, especially the old ones, is to throw away the wisdom of a life; it robs some of learning and others of purpose - and runs contrary to the underlying oneness of the natural order, which tells us that every part of nature has a reason, a purpose for being.
Learning | Life | Life | Nature | Oneness | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Wisdom | Old |
On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Prayer does not change God, it changes us. It deepens insight, increases intuitive perceptions, expands consciousness. It transforms personality. Prayer opens doors to let in God and let out self, to let in love and let out hate, to let in faith and let out fear. Prayer helps us to find ourselves. By praying not to get more, but to be more, we discover a way to serve, a purpose for which to live, a dream to make real... Prayer is thinking and thanking. It is thinking of our many blessings and accepting them with a thankful spirit.
Blessings | Change | Consciousness | Faith | Fear | God | Hate | Insight | Love | Personality | Prayer | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Spirit | Thinking | God |
The point in a relationship is not to make us feel good, but to lead us into a profound alchemy of soul that reveals to us any of the pathways and opening that are the geography of our own destiny and potentiality.
Alchemy | Destiny | Good | Relationship | Soul |
God is. That is the primordial fact. It is in order that we may discover this fact for ourselves, by direct experience, that we exist. The final end and purpose of every human being is the unitive knowledge of God's being.
Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat
If man can, with almost complete assurance, predict phenomena when he knows their laws, and if, even when he does not, he can still, with great expectation of success, forecast the future on the basis of his experience of the past, why, then, should it be regarded as a fantastic undertaking to sketch, with some pretense to truth, the future destiny of man on the basis of his history?
Destiny | Expectation | Experience | Future | History | Man | Past | Phenomena | Success | Truth | Expectation |
David Eli Lilienthal, "Mr. TVA"
Whether happiness or unhappiness, freedom or slavery, in short whether good or evil results from an improved environment depends largely upon how the change has been brought about, upon the methods by which the physical results have been reached, and in what spirit and for what purpose the fruits of that change are used. Because a higher standard of living, a greater productiveness and a command over nature are not good in and of themselves do not mean that we cannot make good of them, that they cannot be a source of inner strength.
Change | Evil | Freedom | Good | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Slavery | Spirit | Strength | Unhappiness | Happiness |
Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose. Of course, as different people have different purposes in life, what is relevant to the purpose of one person might not be relevant to the purpose of another....The degree of simplification is a matter for each individual to settle for himself.
Abundance | Energy | Honesty | Individual | Life | Life | Means | Order | Organization | People | Possessions | Purpose | Purpose | Restraint | Simplicity | Sincerity |
The era of Moshiach is the fulfillment and culmination of the creation of the world, for which purpose it was originally created. Something of this revelation has been experienced once before on earth, at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai [when] "To you it has been shown, to know that the L-rd is G‑d; there is none else beside Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35). G‑dliness was then perceived with physical vision.... Subsquently, however, sin coarsened both them and the world - until the era of Moshiach, when the physicality of the body and the world will be refined, and we will be able to apprehend the revealed Divine light which will shine forth to Israel by means of the Torah.... "The glory of G‑d will be revealed; and all flesh will see that the mouth of G‑d has spoken" (Isaiah 40:5)... This all depends on our deeds and labor throughout the duration of the galut... When a person does a mitzvah, he draws down a flow of Divine light into the world, to be suffused and integrated into the material reality.
Body | Deeds | Era | Fulfillment | Giving | Glory | Labor | Light | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Revelation | Sin | Will | World | Deeds | Torah |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Respect is not fear and awe; it...is the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place
Your destiny depends entirely on your own mental conduct. It is the thoughts that you allow yourself to dwell upon all day long that makes your mentality what it is and circumstances are made by your mentality.
Circumstances | Day | Destiny |
This is what man is all about; this is the purpose of his creation and of the creation of all the worlds, sublime and lowly -- to make for G‑d a dwelling in the physical world.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.