This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every man has a certain sphere of discretion, which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbors. This right flows from the very nature of man. First, all men are fallible: no man can be justified in setting up his judgment as a standard for others. We have no infallible judge of controversies; each man in his own apprehension is right in his decisions; and we can find no satisfactory mode of adjusting their jarring pretensions. If everyone be desirous of imposing his sense upon others, it will at last come to be a controversy, not of reason, but of force. Secondly, even if we had an in fallible criterion, nothing would be gained, unless it were by all men recognized as such. If I were secured against the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue, from imposing my infallible truths upon my neighbor, and requiring his submission independently of any conviction I could produce in his understanding. Man is a being who can never be an object of just approbation, any further than he is independent. He must consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions and conscientiously conform himself to his ideas of propriety. Without this, he will be neither active, nor considerate, nor resolute, nor generous.
Appearance | Assertion | Darkness | Destroy | Lesson | Means | Neglect | Nothing | Public | Reason | Security |
Chögyam Trungpa, fully Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
When you see ordinary situations with extraordinary insight it is like discovering a jewel in rubbish. If work becomes part of your spiritual practice, then your regular, daily problems cease to be only problems and become a source of inspiration. Nothing is rejected as ordinary and nothing is taken as being particularly sacred, but all the substance and material available in life-situations is used.
O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
Age | Chance | Disease | Good | Habit | Hate | Life | Life | Little | Luxury | People | Thinking | Time | Will | Learn | Think |
Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
Character | Circumstances | Security | Will | Woman |
He did not die in the night, He did not die in the day, But in the morning twilight His spirit passed away.
Nothing |
I have said as much as that the aim of art was to destroy the curse of labor by making work the pleasurable satisfaction of our impulse towards energy, and giving to that energy hope of producing something worth its exercise.
Better |
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed Art has remembered the people, because they created.
Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest.
Mass Media will respond that media issues are of great importance because they impact the public trust in news organizations. This ignores the fact that most people already believe Mass Media either makes stuff up, is biased one way or the other, or constantly gets information wrong. Finding out that journalists sometimes invent stories just confirms their preexisting viewpoint.
Innovation | Security | Sense | Survival | Thinking | Will | Loss |
Let us not fear that the issues of natural science shall be scepticism or anarchy. - Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. - The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.
Sorrow |
Nothing yet proves that continued progress is inevitable, but that it is possible no one but an extreme skeptic or pessimist can doubt.
Bible | Example | Intelligence | Life | Life | Reflection | Rest | Revelation | Security | Words | Bible |
Eldridge Cleaver, fully Leroy Eldridge Cleaver
Pig power in America was infuriating, but pig power in the communist framework was awesome and unaccountable.
When you see a hand from afar, Kimya, can you do that there is only one school. But you dive into the water, you realize that there is more than a river. The river is hidden inside various currents and they all run in harmony, yet are completely separate from one another.
Belief | Books | Destroy | Force | God | Good | Insanity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Taste | Time | Words | God | Understand |
One thing that has helped me personally in the past was to stop interfering with the people around me and getting frustrated when I couldn’t change them. Instead of intrusion and passivity, may I suggest submission? Some people make the mistake of confusing submission with weakness, whereas it is anything but. Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.
Balance | Conscience | Ends | Journey | Right | Style | Woman |
Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown
We wear our names heavily. And though we have tried to escape their influence, they have seeped into us, and we find ourselves living their patterns again and again.
We have trivialized this park, residents make too little use of it, and tourists don't know where it is, ... Neither the city or the federal government has bothered to make maximum use of it. The problem is that it had no plan and it's in a state of great deterioration.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Visitors took form gradually in his household, coming out of a haze of rumor, and seemed but lightly, pleasantly superimposed on the vital pattern till a departure tore great shreds from the season’s texture… There was to be no opportunity for what he must not say to be rather painfully not said.