This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke
The Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, the soul of man is immortal... the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all... the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.
Character | Good | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | Happiness |
To love to preach is one thing - to love those to whom we preach, quite another.
The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system, a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include al the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities, and indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.
Character | Experiment | Ignorance | Indolence | Love | Mind | Nature | Observation | Phenomena | Prejudice | Repose | Simplicity | System | Understanding | Will |
A thousand logical statements will be destroyed in the face of one light desire. When a person’s desires overcome his intellect, he becomes an idiot... It is a daily occurrence that people who follow their desires do foolish things that will destroy them both in this world and the next.
Character | Desire | Destroy | Light | People | Will | World |
Champ Clark, formally James Beauchamp Clark
By discharging our duty thoroughly and well, subordinating personal desires to principle, and personal ambition to an exalted love of country, we will not only receive the endorsement of the people, but, what is far better, we will deserve their endorsement.
Ambition | Better | Character | Duty | Love | People | Receive | Will | Ambition |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Every one in his own house and God in all of them.
The child’s grief throbs against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man’s sorrow; and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum as the other in striking the springs of enterprise or soaring on the wings of fame.
Sri Chinmoy, born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose
The meaning of life is to become inseparably one with God the transcendental Bliss and God the universal Peace. The meaning of life is to achieve unconditional self-giving and a self-giving will... complete faith in oneself and a birthless and deathless faith in God. Life is love... Life needs a dream and a goal... Transcendence is the glorious beginning of human perfection... Who am I? I am my life’s unfinished God-manifestation.
Beginning | Character | Faith | Giving | God | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Peace | Perfection | Self | Will | God |
Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not, indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.
Character | Forbearance | Magnanimity | Obligation | Practice | Thankfulness | Virtue | Virtue |
Seymour Cohen, fully Seymour Jay Cohen
A modern commentator made the observation that there re those who seek knowledge about everything and understand nothing. It is wonder - not mere curiosity - a sense of enchantment, of respect for the mysteries of love for the other, that is essential to the difference between a knowing that is simply a gathering of information and techniques and a knowing that seeks insight and understanding. It is wonder that reveals how intimate is the relationship between knowledge of the other and knowledge of the self, between inwardness and outwardness.
Character | Curiosity | Insight | Knowing | Knowledge | Love | Nothing | Observation | Relationship | Respect | Self | Sense | Understanding | Wonder | Respect | Understand |
Thousands of men breathe, move, and live, pass off the stage of life, and are heard of no more. Why? they do not partake of good in the world, and none were blessed by them; none could point to them as the means of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spake, could be recalled; and so they perished: their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name, in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year: you will never be forgotten. No! your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind you as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.
Character | Darkness | Deeds | Good | Life | Life | Light | Man | Means | Men | Redemption | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Deeds | Blessed |