This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One has to watch the movements of the mind without trying to control or suppress it. One has to go through the phase of suffocation, embarrassment and void. It is an unavoidable experience of loneliness through which everyone has to go once in his life.
The essence of religion is the personal discovery of the meaning of life, the meaning of truth. Religion is related to the unconditional, total freedom that truth confers on us. It is a revolution of the whole way of living. Religion moves us from the superficial layers of existence and encourages us to go deeper to the roots of life. It is an inward journey to the depths of our being.
Anarchy | Behavior | Energy | Justify | Life | Life | Love | Revolution | Society | Truth | Ugly | Society |
Silence and Emptiness - In the dimension of silence the movement of thought goes on without creating the illusion of a thinker. The reception of the sensation and the interpretation of the objects surrounding you takes place without the interpreter. The movement of thought goes on without the thinker. There is no centre to say: "I like this and I dislike that, I prefer this and I have a hatred for that". So there is involuntary cerebral activity without the psychological recording or registering. The movement of thought, the movement of knowledge goes on in the body like the movement of breath, of blood. Silence implies the existence of the total human past within you, inside you. It also implies the movement of knowledge, thought, etc. without the knower, without the thinker. The absence of the knower, the thinker, the experiencer, the centre - is the essential part of what we call silence. And because there is no centre, no knower, no experiencer you call it emptiness.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life... one must become externalized; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Honestly face your inner poverty as a means of discovering your inner wealth.
My mother always did it, said Grandma. But why? I don’t know—let’s go ask Great-grandma. So off they went to Great-grandma’s. Great-grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that? Well, Great-grandma said, the pan was too small.
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
Consider Christmas. Could Satan in his most malignant mood have devised a worse combination of graft plus bunkum than the system whereby several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the Western world is made ill from overeating all in the name of the lowly Jesus.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
Children | Dependence | Energy | Glory | Judgment | Love | Memory | Mind | Order | Success | Teach | Truth |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Take it on the mercy of God to punish unnecessarily.
Ignorance | Industry | Intelligence | Knowledge | Men |
Whenever logical processes of thought are employed— that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove— there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.
Absolute | Chance | Energy | Guidance | Meaning | Phenomena | Property | Science | Space | Time | Universe | Wonder | Guidance |
The benefit of proverbs, or maxims, is that they separate those who act on principle from those who act on impulse; and they lead to promptness and decision in acting. - Their value depends on four things: do they embody correct principles; are they on important subjects; what is the extent, and what the ease of their application?
Idleness | Industry | Property | Providence |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
We need to send the message that anyone who orders suicide bombings against Americans, or protects those who do, commits suicide himself. And U.S. marines will search every cave in Afghanistan to make that principle stick. You order, you die — absolutely, positively, you die.