This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
(Mathematical Division of Things, is never made in Minima; but Things may be Physically divided into their least parts; as when Concrete Matter is so far divided that it departs into Physical Monades, as it was in the first State of its Materiality...) Moreover the consideration of this Infinite Divisibility of every thing, into parts always less, is no unnecessary or unprofitable Theory, but a thing of great moment; viz. that thereby may be understood the Reasons and Causes of Things; and how all Creatures from the highest to the lowest are inseparably united with one another, by means of Subtiler Parts interceding or coming in between, which are the Emanations of one Creature into another, by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in Creatures: And if these things be well understood of any one, he may easily see into the most secret and hidden Causes of Things, which ignorant Men call occult Qualities.
Consideration | Means | Men | Qualities | Sympathy | Wisdom |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Hatred is like fire - it makes even light rubbish deadly.
Dreams reflect not only actual happenings, but also a whole host of thoughts and feelings that passed us by during the day because we were too busy or unwilling to catch them. [Besides expressing] the thoughts of our heart... powerful revealers of hidden talents, buried beauty, and unsuspected creative energy. They urge us to recognize that we are actually a lot nicer than we have hitherto realized.
Beauty | Day | Dreams | Energy | Feelings | Heart | Wisdom |
A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.
Friedrich Fröbel, fully Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel
Play is the highest level of child development. It is the spontaneous expression of thought and feeling. It is the purest creation of the child's mind as it is also a pattern and copy of the natural life hidden in man and in all things.
Life | Life | Man | Mind | Play | Thought | Wisdom | Child | Thought |
Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli
A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. For human beings are not so constituted that they can live without expansion. If they do not get it in one way, they must in another, or perish.
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new.
Day | Good | Little | Men | People | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom | Words |
The shaman typically experiences ineffable joy in what he sees, an awe of the beautiful and mysterious worlds that open before him... He is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe. Finally, he brings back his discoveries to build his knowledge and help others.
The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium.
Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL
Amongst all things, knowledge is truly the best thing: from its not being liable ever to be stolen, from its not being purchasable, and from its being imperishable...Learning is superior to beauty; learning is better than hidden treasure; learning is a companion on a journey to a strange country; learning is strength inexhaustible.
Beauty | Better | Journey | Knowledge | Learning | Strength | Wisdom |
Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the willful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes - the vulgar. The high point of taste and elegance is to be sought for, not in the most fashionable circles, but in the best-bred, and such as can dispense with the eternal necessity of never being twice the same.
Abstract | Beauty | Elegance | Eternal | Necessity | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom |
It is certain that a serious attention to the sciences and liberal arts softens and humanizes the temper, and cherishes those fine emotions in which true virtue and honor consist. It very rarely happens that a man of taste and learning is not, at least, an honest man, whatever frailties may attend him.
Attention | Emotions | Frailties | Honor | Learning | Man | Taste | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
We possess a hidden higher self, the spark of divinity within the soul, which reflects this transcendental reality in our lives. By fulfilling certain necessary conditions, such as making ourselves more loving and compassionate, we can clear away the mental and emotional static that separates us from this inner reality, enabling the higher self to assume a central, guiding role in our lives. This awakening - called enlightenment, deliverance, or salvation in the various traditions - is the goal or purpose of human life. When we achieve this complete transformation of consciousness, we awaken from our limited, often painful condition and reconnect with our true nature.
Awakening | Consciousness | Divinity | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Salvation | Self | Soul | Wisdom |
A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she embarks her soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
Adventure | Ambition | Avarice | Heart | History | Life | Life | Soul | Wisdom | Woman | World | Ambition |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into the cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend.
Consciousness | Ego | Little | Will | Wisdom |