This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What is important and of greatest significance is that an ideal of final truth is always before use and that the search for truth is acknowledged by all men as a duty not imposed from outside but born from within. The search for final truth rests with each individual personality and rendering the partial interpretations of our experience fundamentally consistent with one another. It is this fact that justifies the use of the word `God’ to designate the all embracing personality in whose existence ultimate reality exists.
Duty | Existence | Experience | God | Important | Individual | Men | Personality | Reality | Search | Truth |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mine of Truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there in the shape of opening for an ever greater variety of service.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel people to unfold their powers.
Meaning | People | Search | Uncertainty |
The search for wholeness… The word integrity comes from the Latin integritas, which means to be whole or complete. In Hebrew the word for wholeness and completeness is shalom, which also means peace between people and peace within oneself. In Arabic, the word is salaam.
The search for inner peace and the quest for peace in the world go hand in hand. The overall impact of the Ten Commandments is to show us how being a good person in the world and finding a sense of spiritual wholeness deep within are intimately connected to each other.
Are you open to the full interrogation of life? Or are you close to the search because you believe what you’ve always believed without question? Have you pondered the logic of your experiences and dared to follow the direction of their limits and promptings?
Too much to live with, too little to live for… In our own day this question of life purpose is more urgent than ever. Three factors have converged to fuel a search for significance without precedent in human history. First, the search for the purpose of life is one of the deepest issues of our experiences as human beings. Second, the expectation that we can all live purposeful lives has been given a gigantic boost by modern society’s offer of the maximum opportunity for choice and change in all we do. Third, our fulfillment is thwarted by this stunning fact: Out of more than a score of great civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the very first to have a no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life… Most of us in the midst of material plenty, have spiritual poverty.
Change | Choice | Civilization | Day | Expectation | Fulfillment | History | Life | Life | Little | Opportunity | Plenty | Poverty | Precedent | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Search | Society | Expectation |
It’s often said that there are three requirements for a fulfilling life. The first two – a clear sense of personal identity and a strong sense of personal mission – are rooted in the third: a deep sense of life’s meaning. In our time especially, many people are spurred to search for that meaning because they’re haunted by having too much to live with and too little to live for
Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Mission | People | Search | Sense | Time |
Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag
If in the past Christianity, Judaism, or Islam placed itself at the center of the search for truth and unity, there is now a shift away from this kind of tribal centricty to the notion that it is God who is at the center and all the religious traditions of the world must inevitably intersect at this center. One can no longer speak about one’s faith outside the ambience of the plurality of religious traditions.
The degradation of our society today stems mainly from the lack of awareness of what is within us. Being ignorant of our true nature, we seek external solutions to the problems rooted within. In our search for security and prosperity we have abandoned ourselves and are constantly drifting away from human values and virtues.
Awareness | Nature | Problems | Prosperity | Search | Security | Society | Society | Awareness |
“Liturgy” turns into “contemplation” as soon as our prayer ceases to be a search for God and turns into a celebration, by interior experience, of the fact that we have found Him.
Contemplation | Experience | God | Prayer | Search | God |
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
There is a force within that gives you life - seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel - seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and seek that.
A scientist had a bird in his hand. He saw that it had life and, wanting to find out in what part of the bird's body its life lay, he began dissecting the bird. The result was that the very life he was in search of disappeared. Those who try to understand the mysteries of the inner life intellectually will meet with similar failure. The life they are looking for will vanish in the analysis.
Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil. Perhaps it is a lonely person, or an invalid - or some unfortunate inefficient, to whom you can be something. It may be an old man or it may be a child. Or some good work is in want of volunteers who will devote a free evening to it or will run on errands for it. Who can reckon up all the ways in which the priceless fund of impulse, man, is capable of exploitation! He is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some play where you may invest your humanity.
Good | Humanity | Impulse | Little | Man | Men | Play | Search | Sympathy | Time | Will | Work | Old |