This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.
Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.
Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
It is from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.
Max Müller, fully Friedrich Max Müller
Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge of our ignorance, or in the language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge.
Ignorance | Knowledge | Language | Philosophy | Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
What is most difficult to render from one language to another is the tempo of its style.
D. Z. Phillips, fully Dewi Zephaniah Phillips
Clearly a man’s commitment to God shows itself in the language he uses, not only about God, but about the world and his general behavior.
Behavior | Commitment | God | Language | Man | Wisdom | World | God |
The world of silence without speech is the world before creation, the world of unfinished creation. In silenced truth is passive and slumbering, but in language it is wide-awake. Silence is fulfilled only when speech comes forth from silence and gives it meaning and honor.
Honor | Language | Meaning | Silence | Speech | Truth | Wisdom | World |
If anyone should ask me what was the motive for the creation of the world, I will answer what Moses taught, that it was the goodness of the Existent.
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Language is slow; the mastery of wants doth teach it to the infant, drop by drop, as brooklets gather. Yet there is a love, simple and sure, that asks no discipline of weary years, the language of the soul, told through the eye. The stammering lip oft mars the perfect thought; but the heart's lightning hath no obstacle. Quick glances, like the thrilling wires, transfuse the telegraphic look.
Discipline | Heart | Language | Love | Soul | Teach | Thought | Wants | Wisdom |
Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; an if the heart be a lurking-place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part.
Beauty | Contradiction | Crime | Heart | Little | Silence | Soul | Wisdom | Beauty |
Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.
Duty | Intention | Language | Meditation | Neglect | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |
George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner
Music has always had its own syntax, its own vocabulary and symbolic means. Indeed, it is with mathematics the principal language of the mind when the mind is in a condition of non-verbal feeling.