This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them.
Character | Good | Reflection |
Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.
How mysterious in this human life, with all its diversities of contrast and compensation; this web of checkered destinies,; this sphere of manifold allotment, where man lives in his greatness and grossness, a little lower than the angels, a little higher than the brutes.
Angels | Character | Compensation | Contrast | Greatness | Life | Life | Little | Man |
For... what liberty is; there can no other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he useth in his mind, that is, what he himself meaneth when he saith an action... is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied... that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they heard, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient, because experience and matter of fact are not verified by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory.
Absence | Action | Argument | Character | Custom | Experience | Liberty | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Reflection | Sense | Will | Words | Think |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
I have often seen individuals who simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through the widening of his view, the insoluble problem, lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and strong life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led the wildest conflicts and emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that instead of being in it, one is now above it.
Character | Consciousness | Contrast | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | Light | Means | Panic | Personality | Reality |
E. V. Lucas, fully Edward Verrall Lucas
One of the most serious thoughts that life provokes is the reflection that we can never tell, at the time, whether a word, a look, a touch, an occurrence of any kind, is trivial or important.
Character | Important | Life | Life | Reflection | Time | Wisdom |
Our first impulses are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them.
Character | Good | Reflection |
In vain we fondly strive to trace the soul’s reflection in the face.
Character | Reflection | Soul |
So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.
Character | Mind | Peace | Reflection | Right | Self | Serenity | Will | Work |
W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross
No act is ever, in virtue of falling under some general description, necessarily actually right... moral acts often (as every one knows) and indeed always (on reflection we must admit) have different characteristics that tend to make them a the same time prima facie right and prima facie wrong; there is probably no act, for instance, which does good to anyone without doing harm to someone else, and vice versa.
Character | Good | Harm | Reflection | Right | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Vice |
The technical progress of industry has been a reflection of our ability to apply increasingly accurate methods of measurement to material things. The art of measuring psychological human dimensions is relatively undeveloped. To all of the complexities of management we must bring to bear infinite patience and persistence, consistency and complete sincerity.
Ability | Art | Character | Consistency | Industry | Patience | Persistence | Progress | Reflection | Sincerity | Art |
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
Character | Man | Reflection | World |
We may be pretty certain that persons whom all the treats ill deserve the treatment they get. The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly, kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth, and can, by dignified silence, contrast with the garrulity of trivial minds, the more will the world give him credit for the wealth he does not possess.
Contrast | Credit | Man | Silence | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | World | Worth | Value |
Niels Bohr, fully Aage Niels Bohr
One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.
Absurd | Contrast | Distinction | Father | Maxims | Truth | Wisdom | Truths |
It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon as what is.
Reflection | Wisdom |
It is impossible to conceive any contrast more entire and absolute than that which exists between a heart glowing with love to God, and a heart in which the love of money has cashiered all sense of God - His love, His presence, His glory; and which is no sooner relieved from the mockery of a tedious round of religious formalism than it reverts to the sanctuaries where its wealth is invested, with an intenseness of homage surpassing that of the most devout Israelite who ever, from a foreign land, turned his longing eyes toward Jerusalem.
Absolute | Contrast | Glory | God | Heart | Land | Longing | Love of money | Love | Mockery | Money | Sense | Wealth | Wisdom | God |