This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
George Mogridge, aka "Old Humphrey"
How can man be intelligent, happy, or useful, without the culture and discipline of education? It is this that unlocks the prison-house of his mind, and releases the captive.
Culture | Discipline | Education | Happy | Man | Mind | Prison | Wisdom |
Whatever therefore is consequent to a tie of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Culture | Danger | Death | Earth | Enemy | Fear | Force | Industry | Invention | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Men | Security | Society | Strength | Time | War | Wisdom | Danger |
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 |
Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt of others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.
Attention | Authority | Contempt | Conversation | Deference | People | Superiority | Vehemence | Wisdom |
It is possible... for a culture to be overwhelmed physically but not culturally.
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains - under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
No time exists other than now... So now is all you have and all you ever will have... Why not begin doing the best you can right where you are?... Trust the process of growth. Trust God. Pay attention to the details of your life, doing your very best with each challenge that presents itself... The past is the raw material of the present, but the past is not a blueprint for the present... Begin where you are. Do what you can. Even a small effort to change, to grow, to improve, will bring astonishing results... You can choose to build on what you were, but you are not what you were. You can focus on what you will be, but you are not what you will be. What you are is what you are right now - the inheritor of all of God’s gifts.
Attention | Challenge | Change | Effort | Focus | God | Growth | Life | Life | Past | Present | Right | Time | Trust | Will | Wisdom |
A myth is a collective 'dream' of an entire people at a certain point in their history... But a myth not only lives in literature and imagination, it immediately finds its way into the behavior and attitudes of the culture - into the practical daily lives of the people.
Behavior | Culture | History | Imagination | Literature | Myth | People | Wisdom |
Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche or Nyoshul Khenpo Jamyang Dorje
The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, like they who lick the honey from a razor’s edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: turn your attention within, my heart friends.
Attention | Heart | Nature | Perception | Reality | Regard | Suffering | Wisdom |
All of us confronts limits of body, talent, temperament. But that is not all. We are, all of us, also constrained by our time, our place, our civilization. We are bound by the culture we have in common, that culture which distinguishes us from other people in other times. Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives.
The Divine Mind communicates with the human mind through the imagination. A prayer, therefore, should be offered in the form of a mental image. Man must visualize the thing he desires, he must use his imaginative powers to form his petition in terms clearly outlined in his own mind. The profound concentration of attention and thought which this form of prayer requires fills also the heart with deep earnestness and devotion. Man must pray whole-heartedly as well as wholemindedly; he must believe in his heart that his well-being depends completely upon his prayer.
Attention | Devotion | Earnestness | Heart | Imagination | Man | Mind | Prayer | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at un-extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each even of ordinary life.
Attention | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Meditation | Mindfulness | Nothing | Practice | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |
Modern man seems to be afraid of silence. We are conditioned by radio and television on which every minute must be filled with talking, or some kind of sound. We are stimulated by the American philosophy of keeping on the move all the time - busy, busy, busy. This tends to make us shallow. A person's life can be deepened tremendously by periods of silence, used in the constructive ways of meditation and prayer. Great personalities have spent much time in the silence of life.
Life | Life | Man | Meditation | Philosophy | Prayer | Silence | Sound | Talking | Television | Time | Wisdom | Afraid |
If the television craze continues with the present level of programs, we are destined to have a nation of morons.
Present | Television | Wisdom |
Newton Minow, fully Newton Norman Minow
Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today’s world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind’s benefit, so will history decide whether today’s broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them.
Age | Destroy | History | Mankind | People | Space | Television | Will | Wisdom | World |