This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We need to confine our hopes to what we can achieve in our lifetime, always mindful of the fact that the span of life is not guaranteed. The traditional saying `Live each day as thought it were your last’ should thus be adapted to `Live each day as if it could be your last, but could equally be just one more in your short life.’
The first paradox of our lives is that nothing is fixed; and yet nothing is random or accidental, either. We co-create with our spiritual source. We have free will, and yet we are not in control. The second paradox is that when we set our intention for what we desire, we achieve it usually only after we have released our need to have it. This is the paradox of intention (personal desire and will) and surrender (letting God or the universe provide what is best for our highest good). You are both a finite earthly being, and an infinite soul of greater spiritual dimension. Your are both/and. You are the drop of water and the wave. You direct yourself, and you are directed.
Control | Desire | Free will | God | Good | Intention | Need | Nothing | Paradox | Soul | Surrender | Universe | Will | God |
Faith is by its nature non-rational. Having faith does not in any way remove responsibility for one’s own ethical and existential decisions. Faith is about `opting out’ of the need for rational justification rather than a deliberate attempt to act contrary to reason.
Faith | Justification | Nature | Need | Reason | Responsibility |
J. A. C. Brown, fully James Alexander Campbell Brown
Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they “belong” with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations. This being the case, the propagandist is likely to find that his suggestions have fallen on fertile soil so long as he delivers his message with an eye to the existing attitudes and intellectual level of his audience.
Jacob Burckhardt, fully Carl Jacob (or Jakob) Christoph Burckhardt
History is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
Jacob Burckhardt, fully Carl Jacob (or Jakob) Christoph Burckhardt
Not every age finds its great man, and not every great endowment finds its time. There may not exist great men for things that do not exist. In any case, the dominating feeling of our age, the desire of the masses for a higher standard of living, cannot possibly become concentrated in one great figure. What we see before us is a general leveling down, and we might declare the rise of great individuals an impossibility if our prophetic souls did not warn us that the crisis may suddenly pass from the contemptible field of “property and gain” on to quite another and that then the “right man” may appear overnight – and all the world will follow in his train.
Age | Desire | Impossibility | Man | Men | Property | Right | Time | Will | World | Crisis |
Ch'ien, fully T'ao Chien or Tao Qian, aka Tao Yuan-ming NULL
Excessive thinking harms life; we should go where fate leads, and ride on the waves of the Great Flux without joy and without fear. If life must end, then let it end; there is no need to be full of anxieties.
Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modem and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
Age | Arrogance | Control | Man | Misfortune | Nature | Science | Misfortune |
Lowering consumption need not deprive people of goods and services that really matter. To the contrary, life’ most meaningful and pleasant activities are often paragons of environmental virtue. The preponderance of things that people name as their most rewarding pastimes are infinitely sustainable. Religious practice, conversation, family and community gatherings, theater, music, dance, literature, sports, poetry, artistic and creative pursuits, education, and appreciation of nature all fit readily into a culture of permanence – a way of life that can endure through countless generations.
Appreciation | Conversation | Culture | Education | Family | Life | Life | Literature | Music | Nature | Need | People | Poetry | Practice | Virtue | Virtue | Appreciation |