This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.
Reason |
Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.
God | Language | Mathematics | Universe | God |
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like cuttlefish squirting out ink.
Aims | Enemy | Insincerity | Language | Words |
Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
Duty and genuine goodness are mutually exclusive… The sense of “ought” shows me the Good at an infinite impassable distance from my will. Willing obedience is never the fruit of an “ought’ but only of love.
Thinking cannot be clear till it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in a half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flower. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development. Thought is the blossom; language the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.
Action | Feelings | Language | Thinking | Thought | Will | Thought |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Language | Words | Friendship |
The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to is dependency of language and expression.
The more these conscious illusions of the ruling classes are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of the established society.
Common Sense | Language | Sense | Society |
Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
For all the great religions have preached and expounded, or have been revealed by brilliant scholars, or have been written in books and embellished in fine language with finer covers, men - all man - is still confronted with the Great Mystery.
My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind.
Church | Duty | Faith | God | Gratitude | Happy | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Parents | Sense |
Lorenz Oken, born Lorenz Okenfuss
The universe is the language of God.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The altogether courageous and great spirit has, above all, two characteristics. First, he is indifferent to outward circumstances. Such a person is convinced that nothing but moral goodness and propriety are worth admiring and striving for. He knows he ought not be subject to any person, passion, or accident of fortune. His second characteristic is that when his soul has been disciplined in this way, he should do things that are not only great and highly useful, but also deeds that are arduous, laborious and fraught with danger to life and to those things that make life worthwhile.
Accident | Circumstances | Danger | Deeds | Fortune | Life | Life | Nothing | Passion | Soul | Spirit | Worth | Deeds | Danger |