This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in every human being; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil, and social relations; that they teach men to love right, and hate wrong, and seek each other's welfare as children of a common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the heart, and thus make men proficient in self-government; and finally that they teach man to aspire after conformity to a being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes more purifying, exalted, and suited to his nature than any other book the world has ever known - these are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstrations of mathematics.
Awakening | Bible | Children | Conformity | Control | Good | Government | Hate | Heart | Love | Man | Mathematics | Men | Nature | Philosophy | Power | Right | Self | Teach | Wisdom | World | Wrong | Bible | Truths |
Peter Weiss, fully Peter Ulrich Weiss
Every death even the cruelest death drowns in the total indifference of Nature. Nature herself would watch unmoved if we destroyed the entire human race.
Death | Human race | Indifference | Nature | Race | Wisdom |
Stewart Udall, Fully Stewart Lee Udall
Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.
Contempt | Familiarity | Knowledge | Love | Nature | Wisdom |
E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White
The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for Nature to follow. Now we just set the clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom.
Dignity | Evil | Freedom | God | Good | Happy | Man | Price | Suffering | Wickedness | World |
Human law has the true nature of law only in so far as it corresponds to the right reason, and therefore is derived from the eternal law. In so far as it falls short of right reason, a law is said to be a wicked law; and so, lacking the true nature of law, it is rather a kind of violence.
What then does propter hoc add to post hoc? At the factual level, nothing at all, so long as the conjunction is constant in either case... In nature one thing just happens after another. Cause and effect have their place only in our imaginative arrangements and extensions of these primary facts.
To explain the relative peace of the wicked and suffering of the righteous is beyond us.
When people feel separated, they try to make things work by concentrating only on their own willpower and trying to control everything. When you remember to align yourself with your own nature and your life purpose, you naturally are in touch with your natural power. When you align yourself with even a single value, like compassion, trust, self-respect, or following through on synchronicities – life becomes more meaningful, often more fun, more hopeful, and you feel resourceful.
Compassion | Control | Fun | Life | Life | Nature | People | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Respect | Self | Trust | Work | Following |
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.
Loneliness | Love | Nature | Power | Society | Solitude | Wisdom | Wishes |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The political organization of the state rests both on force and on faith.
Faith | Force | Organization |
Louis Agassiz, fully Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
There runs throughout Nature unmistakable evidence of thought, corresponding to the mental operations of our own mind, and therefore intelligible to us as thinking beings, and unaccountable on any other basis than that they owe their existence to the working of intelligence; and no theory that overlooks this element can be true to nature.
Evidence | Existence | Intelligence | Mind | Nature | Thinking | Thought |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
Duty | Freedom | God | Man | Sacrifice | Spirit | Suffering |