This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist - and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists - knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession. The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking feeling and fancying.
Action | Aesthetic | Character | Consciousness | Contemplation | Desire | Discovery | Emotions | Ends | Enough | Good | Imagination | Knowing | Man | Reward | Science | Thinking | Will | Discovery |
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
Character | Consciousness | Habit | Little | Man | People | Soul |
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Beginning | Character | Ends | Evil | Fanaticism | Fear | Religion | Wickedness |
John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL
What is your purpose? A purpose is something you discover. It's already there. It's always been there. You've lived your life by it, perhaps without fully realizing it... It is not a goal. A goal is something that can be reached. A purpose is a direction...A purpose is never achieved; it is fulfilled in each moment that you are "on purpose."... A purpose is not an affirmation. Affirmations can be created and used to make the creation real.
E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
I take them to be the only rich man that lives upon what he has, owes nothing, and is contented; for there is no determinate sum of money, nor quantity of estate, that can denote a man rich, since no man is truly rich that has not so much as perfectly satiates his desire of having more; for the desire of more is want, and want is poverty.
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
Character | Man | Position | Responsibility | Will |
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
The covetous man always wants.
E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes.
The contradiction between what is requested of man and what can be offered to him has become so striking, the ideology so thin, the discontents in civilization so great that they must be compensated through annihilation of those who do not conform, political enemies, Jews, asocial persons, the insane. The new order of fascism is reason revealing itself as unreason.
Character | Civilization | Contradiction | Man | Order | Reason |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
When, in our pain, we turn our attention to life’s purpose, we take up pain as a thread through the labyrinth... But when we deny pain, we are denying life itself. When we flee from pain that we cannot escape, we are fleeing from an opportunity to grow.
Attention | Character | Life | Life | Opportunity | Pain | Purpose | Purpose |
If there is freedom... there is a spiritual Reality, which it is the final end and purpose of consciousness to know; then all life is in the nature of an intelligence test, and the higher the level of awareness and the greater the potentialities of the creature, the more searchingly difficult will be the questions asked.
Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Will | Awareness |