This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is an ecclesiastical cliché used in connection with candidates for the ministry. The candidates do not speak of seeking a job but of receiving a “call,” which in their language is from God. It is a euphemistic pleasantry which deceives no one. Nevertheless the conventional phraseology of being “called” is sometimes a psychological reality and represents an inner transformation and the prelude to a life of dedication. It is a pity that the same spirit is not more evident in the field of medicine. The phenomenon of inner urgency which draws us in one direction against rival interests stems from something deeper than a line of reasoning. Rather it is due to the type of person we are. This prompts us to inquire whether there is any purpose or pattern behind our having been born at all.
Dedication | God | Language | Life | Life | Pity | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Spirit |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Without publicity there can be no public spirit, and without public spirit every nation must decay.
When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
The spirit of the age is the very thing that a great man changes.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
Never the spirit born; the spirit shall cease to be never; never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams! Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever; Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
Spirit |
Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it...Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike - brothers of one father and one mother, with only the sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all.
Chance | Earth | Father | Government | Law | Man | Men | Mother | People | Rights | Spirit | Will | Government |
A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existence. If such security; is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God?
Accident | Death | Existence | Fear | God | Ideas | Life | Life | Man | People | Security | Spirit |
Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all people as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife or his property without paying for it. We were taught that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts: If he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.
Disgrace | Good | Man | People | Property | Shame | Spirit | Truth | Wife | Will |
Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
Our fathers gave us many laws, which they have learned from their fathers; these laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us; that we should never break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie, that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife, or his property without paying for it. We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything and that he never forgets; that hereafter He will give every man a spirit home according to his desserts - if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he was bad, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.
Disgrace | Good | Man | Men | People | Property | Shame | Spirit | Truth | Wife | Will |
Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat
If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.
Chance | Earth | Law | Liberty | Man | Men | Mother | Peace | People | Rights | Spirit | Wants |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels – men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
No invention could ever take the hard work out of creating - out of good writing, painting, composing, inventing, etc. The economy of the spirit is incurably an economy of scarcity. An affluent society might be able to dispense with the ethic of work in its everyday life, but to attain any sort of excellence it will have to implant implacable taskmasters in the breasts of its people. Indeed, without the disciple of the creative effort the affluent society will be without stability. It might have to become a creative society in order to survive.
Effort | Excellence | Good | Invention | Life | Life | Order | People | Society | Spirit | Will | Work | Writing | Excellence | Society |
Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man’s spirit than when we win his heart. For we can win a man’s heart one day and lose it the next. But when we break a proud spirit, we achieve something that is final and absolute.
The principle of heredity succession is universal; but the order has been variously established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national institutions, or by some partial example which was originally decided by fraud or violence.