This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe
The young men of this land are called a "lost" race - they are a race that has never yet been discovered. And the whole secret, power, and knowledge of their own discovery is locked within them - they know it, feel it, have the whole thing in them - and they cannot utter it.
Discovery | Knowledge | Land | Men | Power | Race | Wisdom | Discovery |
There is an absolute truth about everything; it lies behind all blunders and all partial knowledges, a calm, sure, unfound certainty, like the great sea beneath its waves, like the great sky behind its clouds. God knows it. It and the possession of it makes the eternal difference between God’s knowledge and man’s. It is a beautiful and noble faith when a man thus believes in the absolute truth, unfound, unfindable perhaps by man, and yet surely existent behind and at the heart of everything.
Absolute | Eternal | Faith | God | Heart | Knowledge | Man | Truth | God |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Just as life is defined as biological change and death as its lack, so meaning in life is characterized by the application of stable patterns to changing circumstances and the replacing of old patterns of understanding with new and exploratory ones. Meaning is found in the losing of it, the searching after it, and in the finding of it again. The meaning in your life is in flux and is to be found in the flux (the flow) of meaning, which is therefore itself a source of meaning in your life. All this does require, however, the developing of a tolerance for ambiguity, of a willingness to accept the inevitability of change and the precariousness of your present vision, and of an openness to the unending richness of your experience of the world in its manifold variety and diversity.
Ambiguity | Change | Circumstances | Death | Diversity | Experience | Life | Life | Meaning | Openness | Present | Understanding | Vision | World | Old |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Values change, just as the body of knowledge available to us changes, and it is imperative that we be not only open to the changes as they creep up on us but actually strive to play an important role in such valuational change.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
The ability to become bamboo is a metaphor for reaching beyond the perceptual, intellectual, and feeling habits, expectations, and assumptions of your own psyche and traditions in order to allow the embracing and the understanding of those of another. In actually becoming bamboo it is essential to listen to another with an open mind and heart, and thereby to embrace what you were previously unwilling or unable genuinely to encounter.
Ability | Heart | Mind | Order | Understanding |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
True patriotism doesn’t exclude an understanding of the patriotism of others.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
Art | Beauty | Existence | Experience | Fear | Good | Knowledge | Man | Mystery | Reason | Religion | Science | Sense | Wonder | Art |
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men, wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
In heads replete with thoughts of other men: Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he know no more.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Enough | Imagination | Important | Knowledge | World |