This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A conscience void of offense, before God and man, is an inheritance for eternity.
Character | Conscience | Eternity | God | Inheritance | Man | Offense | God |
Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
The void yields up nothing. You have to be a great poet to make it ring.
Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life - it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.
Conscience | Eternity | God | Inheritance | Life | Life | Man | Offense | Reputation | Wisdom | World | God |
If meditation is aimed at curing an illness the practicer should forget all about the thought of curing it, and if it is for improving health he should forget all about the idea of improvement, because when mind and objects are forgotten everything will be void and the result thus achieved will be the proper one... If the thoughts of curing an illness and of improving health are clung to the mind will be stirred and no result can be expected.
Health | Improvement | Meditation | Mind | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
Man has arrived at a view of the world in which his own presence is not essential… This is the blindness behind the eyes… Man has grown blind to himself; therefore, as far as he is concerned, life is void of meaning. That is the peril humanity is in.
What shall it avail man if he conquers the whole of outer space and cannot compass the void within?
In our loss of the perception of the Void and our conviction that particular things are finally real, we come to believe in the separate, isolated reality of some enduring self within us for which we a plan and hope great things. Alas, we are frustrated in our hoping because all through our lives our hopes are incompletely attained or, if fulfilled, strangely unsatisfying after all.
If one waits in emptiness one comes to realize that the void is God: it is not a preparatory stage but the experience of God Himself.
Experience | God | God |
The principle of causality, limited exclusively to explaining the interconnection of phenomena, and void of any metaphysical significance, has become incapable of making the mind pass from the world to God. Man’s mind, if not his heart, has become godless, and knowledge, or science, has dethroned wisdom.
God | Heart | Knowledge | Man | Mind | Phenomena | Science | Wisdom | World |
Our legal system would be rendered useless and void if men refused to obey the laws, and the axiom “You can’t legislate morality” were accepted.
Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
Life wants to secure itself against the void that is raging within. The risk of eternal void is to be met by the premium of temporal insurance… social security, old age pensions, etc. It springs no less from metaphysical despair than from material misery.
Age | Despair | Eternal | Life | Life | Old age | Risk | Security | Wants | Old |
Mankind I know not; I know men. Not freedom, but free men. Not happiness, but happy men. Not beauty, but beautiful things. Not God, but the pure flame of tapers. Those who bend their minds on definitions otherwise than as wellsprings of significance, prove but the void of their hearts, and their own inanity. And they will neither live nor die, for men do not live or die by words.
Beauty | Freedom | God | Happy | Mankind | Men | Will | Words |