This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; not did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and search out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, when they to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
Experience | Life | Life | Meanness | Practice | Resignation | Search | Teach | World | Learn |
If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction. The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings, only the iron in God's sand is gold!
Blessings | Day | God | Gold | Heart | Power | Search | Will |
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Justification | Man | Philosophy | Search | Selfishness |
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; he would search for pearls must dive below.
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A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life... Variation, experiment and insurgence are all of them attributes of freedom.
Beauty | Contemplation | Day | Experiment | Freedom | Life | Life | Mystery | Perfection | Poverty | Search | Sound | Truth | Contemplation |
Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
The search for truth should be the goal of our activities; it is the sole end worthy of them. Doubtless we should first bend our efforts to assuage human suffering, but why? Not to suffer is a negative ideal more surely attained by the annihilation of the world. If we wish more and more to free man from material cares, it is that he may be able to employ the liberty obtained in the study and contemplation of truth.
Contemplation | Liberty | Man | Search | Study | Suffering | Truth | World | Contemplation |
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma
The meaning of life is rooted in each person’s search for happiness. Happiness is not something one has to go anywhere to find: The nature of life is happiness. Life knows this about itself, not through analysis or investigation but simply by virtue of being.
Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Search | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.
Action | Life | Life | Neglect | Search | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Value |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The search after truth is peculiar to man.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
No matter how much we strive to understand, ultimate reality will always remain hidden? Only if the search for truth is motivated by the desire to reach an absolute answer. The person looking for certainty is bound to be disappointed... If on the other hand we realize that the partial truths we uncover are all legitimate aspects of the unknowable universe, then we can learn to enjoy the search and derive from it the pleasure one gets from any creative act... One must painstakingly match one’s preconceptions against actual, ongoing experience to begin separating truth from illusion.
Absolute | Desire | Experience | Illusion | Pleasure | Reality | Search | Truth | Universe | Will | Learn | Truths |
Norman Lear, fully Norman Milton Lear
The desire to lead a more purposeful life, to search for ultimate meanings, is a central theme of human experience... This spiritual urge is undeniable. From the beginning of human history, we have been embarked on a search for transcendent meaning.
Beginning | Desire | Experience | History | Life | Life | Meaning | Search |
Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature -if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature- consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Philosophy is the continuing search for life’s meaning.
Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Search |
No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.
The whole of man’s life on the face of Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matter. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate.
Earth | Life | Life | Man | Money | Power | Search | Soul | Will | Wisdom |
You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.
Experience | Search |