This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live.
We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast — and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.
Art | Better | Character | Estimation | Insight | Need | Science | Understanding | Art |
To-day, in the estimation of many, science and art are taking the place of religion. But science and art alike are inadequate to build up character and to furnish binding rules of conduct. We need also a clearer understanding of applied ethics, a better insight into the specific duties of life, a finer and a surer moral tact.
Children | Heart | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Order | Rank | Sense | Words | Teacher | Understand |
There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare."
Daring | Life | Life | Man | Men | Present | Righteousness | Search | Theories | Thinkers | Thought | Time | Truth | Unity | Will | Woman | World | Youth | Youth | Learn | Thought |
There may be, and there ought to be, progress in the moral sphere. The moral truths which we have inherited from the past need to be expanded and restated. In times of misfortune we require for our support something of which the truth is beyond all question, in which we can put an implicit trust, "though the heavens should fall." A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.
We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. And on the other hand we shall be just to those who have ceased to regard them as satisfactory and dispensed with them in their own persons.
To those who are longing for a higher life, who deeply feel the need of religious satisfactions, we suggest that there is a way in which the demands of the head and the heart may be reconciled. Religion is not necessarily allied with dogma, a new kind of faith is possible, based not upon legend and tradition, not upon the authority of any book, but upon the moral nature of man.
Belief | Misfortune | Need | Past | Progress | Truth | Misfortune | Truths |
To understand the meaning of a great religious teacher we must find in our own life experiences somewhat akin to his. To selfish, unprincipled persons whose heart is wholly set on worldly ends, what meaning, for instance, can such utterances have as these? "You must become like little children if you would possess the kingdom of heaven;" "You must be willing to lose your life in order to save it;" "If you would be first you must consent to be last." To the worldly-minded such words convey no sense whatever; they are, in fact, rank absurdity.
Authority | Faith | Heart | Longing | Nature | Need | Religion |
It's no good fighting against Fate or trying to resist the smile of the angels. Who can help being swept off his feet by all that is beautiful, charming, adorable?
Need |
One ought to know everything, to write. All of us scribblers are monstrously ignorant. If only we weren?t lacking in stamina, what a rich field of ideas and similes we could tap! Books that have been the source of entire literatures, like Homer and Rabelais, contain the sum of all the knowledge of their times. They knew everything, those fellows, and we know nothing.
Matters of deeper import seemed to seek utterance in the expression of their eyes. They tried to speak of ordinary, everyday things, but all the while they felt a mutual languor stealing into their inmost being. It was like a murmur of the soul, deep down, persistent, dominating the spoken word. Lost in wonder at the strange sweetness that stole upon their senses, they never spoke of it to one another or sought to probe its cause. Coming delights, like the shores of tropic isles, exhale across the spreading seas their perfume-laden airs, the native softness of the clime; and they who breathe them, their spirits lulled as if by wine, scan not, nor try to scan, the faint, far-off horizon.
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Pellerin read every work on ‘sthetics, in order to find out the true theory of the Beautiful, convinced that, when he had discovered it, he would produce masterpieces. He surrounded himself with every imaginable auxiliary?drawings, plaster-casts, models, engravings; and he kept searching about, eating his heart out.
My novel is the rock to which I cling and I know nothing of what is taking place in the world.
Need |
It?s hard to communicate anything exactly and that?s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.