This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Opposed elements stand to each other in mutual requirement. In their unity, they inhibit or contrast. God and the World stand to each other in this opposed requirement. God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities, seeking a perfected unity. Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimately metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other.
Contrast | God | Novelty | Unity | Vision | World | Novelty | God |
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibly, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
Properly understood, prayer is a mature activity indispensable to the fullest development of personality - the ultimate integration of man’s highest faculties. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
Body | Indispensable | Integration | Man | Mind | Personality | Prayer | Spirit | Strength |
Man’s dwelling place, who could found you on reasoning, or build your walls with logic? You exist, and you exist not. You are, and are not. True, you are made out of diverse materials, but for your discovery an inventive mind was needed. Thus if a man pulled his house to pieces, with the design of understanding it, all he would have before him would be heaps of bricks and stones and tiles. he would not be able to discover therein the silence, the shadows and the privacy they bestowed. Nor would he see what service this mass of bricks, stones and tiles could render him, now that they lacked the heart and soul of the architect, the inventive mind which dominated them. For in mere stone the heart and soul of man have no place. But since reasoning can deal with only such material things as bricks and stones and tiles, and there is no reasoning about the heart and soul that dominate them and thus transform them into silence - inasmuch as the heart and soul have no concern with the rules of logic or the science of numbers - this is where I step in and impose my will. I, the architect; I, who have a heart and soul; I, who wield the power of transforming stone into silence. I step in and mold that clay, which is the raw material, into the likeness of the creative vision that comes to me from God; and not through any faculty of reason. Thus, taken solely by the savor it will have, I build my civilization; as poets build their poems, bending phrases to their will and changing words, without being called upon to justify the phrasing of the changes, but taken solely by the savor these will have, vouched by their hearts.
Civilization | Design | Discovery | God | Heart | Justify | Logic | Man | Mind | Power | Reason | Science | Service | Silence | Soul | Understanding | Vision | Will | Words | Discovery |
It takes vision and courage to create. It takes faith and courage to prove.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
A human being may be defined as a personality with a will of its own capable of making moral choices between good and evil.
Evil | Good | Personality | Will |
A task without a vision is drudgery; a vision without a task is a dram; a task with a vision is victory.
Vision |
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The emergence of a superman or a great mystic or a genius or a superior personality inevitably precipitates a social conflict. The conflict will be more or less acute, according to the degree in which the creative individual happens to rise above the average level of his former kin and kind. But some conflict is inevitable, since the social equilibrium which the genius has upset by the mere fact of his personal emergence has eventually to be restored either by his social triumph or by his social defeat.
Defeat | Genius | Individual | Inevitable | Personality | Will |
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Lines converging from the base of a pyramid start from infinite points of diversity. The nearer the apex the closer they come to one another until at the summit they reach the point of unity. So it is that religions at the base exhibit irreconcilable differences and conflicts. But as they approach sight of the spiritual light of their origin, they, like converging lines within a pyramid, draw close to one another until the supernal vision at the apex submerges all differences into unity.
Visionary sights unseen see future shapes never made from thoughts unthought which imagine the unimaginable in new colour vision of everything out there but not as we know it.
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title.
If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality - that single spark of divinity that sets you apart and makes you different from every other living creature.
Divinity | Personality | Will | World |
Perfection of hearing is not hearing others, but oneself. Perfection of vision is not seeing others, but oneself.
Perfection | Vision |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The superior man develops his personality by means of his wealth, the inferior man develops wealth at the expense of his personality.
Man | Means | Personality | Wealth |
Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up.