This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Max Müller, fully Friedrich Max Müller
Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge of our ignorance, or in the language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge.
Ignorance | Knowledge | Language | Philosophy | Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
What is most difficult to render from one language to another is the tempo of its style.
D. Z. Phillips, fully Dewi Zephaniah Phillips
Clearly a man’s commitment to God shows itself in the language he uses, not only about God, but about the world and his general behavior.
Behavior | Commitment | God | Language | Man | Wisdom | World | God |
The world of silence without speech is the world before creation, the world of unfinished creation. In silenced truth is passive and slumbering, but in language it is wide-awake. Silence is fulfilled only when speech comes forth from silence and gives it meaning and honor.
Honor | Language | Meaning | Silence | Speech | Truth | Wisdom | World |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Language is slow; the mastery of wants doth teach it to the infant, drop by drop, as brooklets gather. Yet there is a love, simple and sure, that asks no discipline of weary years, the language of the soul, told through the eye. The stammering lip oft mars the perfect thought; but the heart's lightning hath no obstacle. Quick glances, like the thrilling wires, transfuse the telegraphic look.
Discipline | Heart | Language | Love | Soul | Teach | Thought | Wants | Wisdom |
Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.
Duty | Intention | Language | Meditation | Neglect | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |
George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner
Music has always had its own syntax, its own vocabulary and symbolic means. Indeed, it is with mathematics the principal language of the mind when the mind is in a condition of non-verbal feeling.
Please stop using the word “Negro”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven varieties of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.
All societies create their own worlds, using language and folklore to impose an arbitrary order on the complexity of the cosmos. This ordering of reality helps make sense of things by interpreting information in ways which are compatible with what is already known.
Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, known also as Fares Chidiac, Faris Al Chidiac
Every language in the world has something beautiful and something ugly about it, for language is nothing more than the expression of the activities, thoughts, and actions of human beings. There is naturally always something to blame and something to praise.
For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.
Better | Illusion | Language | Lesson | Life | Life | Music | Sense | Teach | Time |
Sentient species think (to the extent that this is possible for their species) and act rationally most of the time. To do otherwise reduces the species chances of survival because their home (the universe) is rationally (i.e., causally) constructed. The universe’s causality binds thinking, language and intelligence together.
Intelligence | Language | Survival | Thinking | Time | Universe | Think |