This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Franz Boas, fully Franz Uri Boas
It is our task to inquire into the causes that have brought about the observed differentiation, and to investigate the sequence of events that have led to the establishment of the multifarious forms of human life.
Events |
The future need not be a repetition of the past. Frequently one is caught by a paucity of imagination which conceives of the future only in terms of rearranging past events or experiences that are already known. Persistent attempts to explain the unknown in terms of what is already known, can lead to blind repetition of unsatisfactory patterns that limit growth and restrict possibilities.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The greatest events - are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.
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Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.
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The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all the phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe. The Hindus call it Brahman, The Buddhists Dharmakaya (The Body of Being) or Tathata (Suchness) and the Taoists Tao; each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concepts and defies further explanation. This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to the very nature to manifest itself in myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves into one another without end.
Body | Events | Experience | Mysticism | Nature | Phenomena | Reality | World |
Life is essentially a series of events to be lived through rather than intellectual riddles to be played with and solved.
Events |
This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.
Art | Control | Cruelty | Events | Force | Cruelty | Art | Understand |
For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own. This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.
Art | Control | Cruelty | Events | Force | Cruelty | Art | Understand |
Jefferson Davis, known as Jeff Davis
Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.
J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte
If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man's life would only serve to make a chronological table—a fool's notion of history.
Action does not come to a stop in its structures, it remains in action. In other words, there is much more in bodies, thins and events than is contained in their structures or material forms. All things overflow their own structural limits. The inner Action transcends the outer structure, and there is thus a trend in things beyond themselves.
Jim Lovell, fully James "Jim" Arthur Lovell
You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.
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All revelation is given, not in the form of directly communicated knowledge, but through events occurring in the historical experience of mankind, events which are apprehended by faith as the “mighty acts” of God.
Events | Experience | Faith | Revelation |