This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Spirit is man’s whole creative act. Spirit is freedom, and freedom has its roots in the depths of pre-existential being.
The human spirit has fashioned its prayers out of its loneliness, its persuasion of being something other than earthdust or star-dust.
Loneliness | Persuasion | Spirit |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
Religion is not mere conformity to moral law, it is an espousal of moral ideals, a dedication of the heart, a loyal devotion, the perpetual renewal of a right spirit within us.
Conformity | Dedication | Devotion | Heart | Ideals | Law | Moral law | Religion | Right | Spirit |
The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the gates of humility.
In your daily life, you can treat people you meet in a way that strengthens them in spirit through genuine interest or respect… not a patronizing or false sense of sincerity… but rather a genuine curiosity and respect for each individual you meet… Your actions do make a lasting impact on each person you encounter. It’s an enormous responsibility to take seriously how you treat the people in your life, and a great joy to know you have acted with caring, warmth, and love.
Curiosity | Individual | Joy | Life | Life | Love | People | Respect | Responsibility | Sense | Sincerity | Spirit | Respect |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The spirit of nonresistance… is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul.
I believe that our choice between two models of psychiatry is really a choice between two competing sets of moral values that will ultimately determine the kind of society we live in. One is the Psychotherapeutic Model’s ideal of healing the soul with its values of self-awareness, autonomy, personal growth, an I-Thou spirit of love, respect, and compassion for others, and an acceptance of moral responsibility for our own egoistic impulses and emotions. The other is the Medical Model’s ideal of quick fix, with its swimming-pool values of stability and conformity, and an I-It orientation toward material success and other superficial addictive pleasures
Acceptance | Awareness | Choice | Compassion | Conformity | Emotions | Growth | Love | Model | Respect | Responsibility | Self | Self-awareness | Society | Soul | Spirit | Success | Will | Society |
Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré
God, the Ground of Being, the Spirit Creator of all being, creates because he is love. Therefore he creates finite persons who are spirits, but have being, that they might learn to love. To learn to love man needs genuine self-being, genuine freedom; therefore man is put in an indirect relation to God within a pedagogical process where he can go his own partial, rebellious and faithless way until he discover, through fear and frustration, indeed through all the opposite experiences from Love, that God’s way, the way of love, is alone in accordance with man’s deepest nature and alone can satisfy his deepest needs.
Fear | Freedom | God | Love | Man | Nature | Self | Spirit | God | Learn |
Change is not always progress… A fever of newness has been everywhere confused with the spirit of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
I do dimly perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. That informing power of spirit is God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is.