This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.
God | Life | Life | Personality | Search | Unique | Will | God |
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision us to continue against all odds. Life is for service.
Growth | Heart | Life | Life | Spirit | Universe | Vision | Wants | Intellect |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
Vision |
Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being and is subject to the law of the mental unity of crowds.
Absence | Better | Ideas | Law | Men | Mind | Personality | Unity | Will |
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
A great new world is struggling into existence. But its struggle remains catastrophic until it can produce an adequate knowledge organization ... An immense, an ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today, a wealth of knowledge and suggestion that – systematically ordered and generally disseminated – would probably give this giant vision and direction and suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but the knowledge is still dispersed, unorganized, impotent in the face of adventurous violence and mass excitement.
Knowledge | Organization | Struggle | Vision | Wealth | World |
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
I first believed without any hesitation in the existence of the soul, and then I wondered about the secret of its nature. I persevered and strove in search of the soul, and found at last that I myself was the cover over my own soul. I realized that that in me which believed and that in me that wondered, that which was found at last, was no other than my soul. I thanked the darkness that brought me to the light, and I valued this veil that prepared for me the vision in which I saw myself reflected, the vision produced in the mirror of my soul. Since then, I have seen all souls as my soul, and realized my soul as the soul of all. And what bewilderment it was when I realized that I alone was, if there were anyone, that I am whatever and whoever exists, and that I shall be whoever there will be in the future
Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Oxford
Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.
Vision |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift or law there is far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.
Absolute | Conformity | Crime | Custom | Force | Ideas | Law | Personality | Philosophy |
What we hope for at the School of Dreams is the strength both to deal and to receive the axe's blow, to look straight at the face of God, which is none other than my own face, but seen naked, the face of my soul. The face of "God" is the unveiling, the staggering vision fo the construction we are, the tiny and great lies, the small nontruths we must have incessantly woven to be able to prepare our brothers' dinner and cook for our children. An unveiling that only happens by surprise, by accident, and with a brutality that shatters: under the blow of truth, the eggshell we are breaks. Right in the middle of life's path: the apocalypse; we lose a life.
Brutality | Dreams | Hope | Receive | Right | Strength | Vision |
Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it.
Care | Life | Life | People | Responsibility | Vision | Old |
The Enneagram is a psychological and spiritual system with roots in ancient traditions. Traces of it can be found in Sufism, Judaism, and specifically, in the seven capital tendencies of early Christianity. These seven capital tendencies, anger, pride, envy, avarice, gluttony, lust, and sloth, along with two general traits everyone shares, deceit and fear, make up the nine personality types of the Enneagram. Each personality type on the nine-pointed star of the Enneagram can be seen as a pointer to a constellation of tendencies, perspectives, and habitual perceptions characteristic to each type. In Enneagram study, these constellations of motivation are called passions, and each one colors how we experience ourselves, our relationships and the world around us. The purpose of Enneagram studies is gain insight into how these passions and compulsions operate in ourselves and others, thereby fostering self-understanding and empathy, giving rise to improved relationships.
Deceit | Experience | Giving | Insight | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | System | World |
We have no definition of God; we have only a roadway that leads out toward God. We are convinced beyond peradventure that he who travels merely the path of electrons, atoms, molecules toward a vision of the ultimate misses it, and that he who travels the road of spiritual values – goodness, truth, beauty – finds it. The eternal and creative Power cannot be adequately approached through the metrical world alone; the innermost nature of the ultimate is revealed also in the personal world of spiritual values.
Beauty | Eternal | Nature | Power | Vision | World | Beauty |
The universe is but a kaleidoscope which turns within the mind of the so-called thinking being, who is himself a curiosity without a cause, an accident conscious of the great accident around him, and who amuses himself with it so long as the phenomenon of his vision lasts.
Accident | Curiosity | Mind | Thinking | Universe | Vision |
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
All media as extensions of ourselves serve to provide new transforming vision and awareness.
Vision |
I believe that love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
Love | Nothing | Personality |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
The greatest adventure that can happen to a human being is the movement from mind to no-mind, the movement from personality to individuality. The no-mind has an individuality: the mind is social.
Adventure | Mind | Personality |
A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.
Vision |
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Achievement | Dreams | Soul | Time | Vision |