This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. - A man with a good coat on his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. - You may analyze this and say, what is there in it? - But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.
Precept |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
The conceptions I have summarized here I first put forward only tentatively, but in the course of time they have won such a hold over me that I can no longer think in any other way.
Attention | Better | Cause | Change | Civilization | Ethics | Example | Love | Nothing | Possessions | Precept | Religion | Unhappiness | Virtue | Virtue | Obstacle | Think |
If we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent to the observation of justice, and other laws of Nature, without a common Power to keep them all in awe; we might as well suppose all mankind to do the same; and then there neither would be nor need to be any civil government or commonwealth at all, because there would be Peace without subjection.
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and on the way to their end, which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their dedication only, endeavor to destroy or subdue one another.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Change | Debt | Toleration | War | Think |
Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and... he [can] be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will.
Ambition | Avarice | Duty | Existence | Faith | Genius | God | Mankind | Men | Misfortune | Opinion | People | Possessions | Rights | Teach | Toleration | Will | Misfortune | Ambition | Following | God |
If we are fools enough to remain at the mercy of the people who want to sell us happiness, it will be impossible for us ever to be content with anything. How would they profit if we became content? We would no longer need their new product. The last thing the salesman wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our affluent society unless you are always just about to grasp what you never have. The Greeks were not as smart as we are. In their primitive way they put Tantalus in hell. Madison Avenue, on the contrary, would convince us that Tantalus is in heaven.
Good | Patience | Toleration |
W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace
The problem of evil assumes the existence of a world-purpose. What, we are really asking, is the purpose of suffering? It seems purposeless. Our question of the why of evil assumes the view that the world has a purpose, and what we want to know is how suffering fits into and advances this purpose. The modern view is that suffering has no purpose because nothing that happens has any purpose: the world is run by causes, not by purposes.
Good | Time | Toleration |
Those monks who went to the Tang to study before spent much time in that country and all were without mention of this, and now you write stating that in Dali 4 (769) they initiated a MahÄyÄna high seat where the bodhisattva MañjuÅ›rÄ« is placed in all temple dining halls across the land. From then until Zhenyuan 22 (806)3, exactly thirty-eight years have passed. It corresponds to Enryaku 25 (806) in the country of Great Japan. As they say, 'Looking at outward appearances unaware of their contents.'
All through the centuries, scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.
Marriage | Men | Precept | Old Testament | Old |