This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Many men do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.
Children | Men | Principles |
If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous, and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
Change | Expectation | God | Men | Necessity | Nothing | Power | Silence | Sound | Wonder | Expectation |
In reference to our moral conduct, there is not a single principle now known to the most cultivated Europeans which was not likewise known to the ancients.
Conduct |
Ibn `Arabi, full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī
He is, and there is with him no before or after, no above nor below, nor far nor near, no union nor division, nor how nor where nor place. He is now as he was. He is the One without oneness and the Single without Singleness… whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God.
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history of not only cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness…The future is an infinite succession of "presents," and to live now as we think that human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Compassion | Courage | Cruelty | Defiance | Future | History | Kindness | Sacrifice | Think |
The money, technology, and human energy now devoted to the military could perform miracles in cleaning up the earth we live on. But the cost of the arms race is not only the enormous waste of resources. There is a psychic cost - the creation of an atmosphere of fear all over the world.
Cost | Earth | Energy | Fear | Miracles | Money | Race | Technology | Waste | World |
I recognize that I live now and only now, and I will do what I want to do this moment and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.
Will |
That in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being) is an end in himself, that is, that he can never be used merely as a means by any (not even by God) without being at the same time an end also himself, that therefore humanity in our person must be holy to ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the moral law, in other words, of that which is holy in itself, and on account of which and in agreement with which alone can anything be termed holy. For this moral law is founded on the autonomy of his will, as a free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself.
Ends | Free will | God | Humanity | Law | Man | Means | Moral law | Order | Time | Will | Words |
Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given for you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything . Live the questions now and perhaps without knowing it you will live along some day into the answers.
If men gave three times as much attention as they now do to ventilation, ablution, and exercise in the open air, and only one third as much to eating, luxury, and late hours, the number of doctors, dentists, and apothecaries, and the amount of neuralgia, dyspepsia, gout, fever, and consumption would be changed in corresponding ratio.
Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception.
Platitudes | Respect | Self | Self-deception |
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
Our object in life should be to accumulate a great number of questions to be asked and resolved in eternity. Now we ask the sage, the genius, the philosopher, the divine, but none can tell; but we will open our queries to other respondents - we will ask angels, redeemed spirits, and God.
Angels | Eternity | Genius | God | Life | Life | Object | Will |
In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation.
Affectation | Art | Hypocrisy | Politics | Religion |
Because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. that so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
Character | Courage | Danger | Eccentricity | Genius | Opinion | Order | People | Society | Strength | Time | Tyranny | Society | Danger |
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
Character | Courage | Danger | Eccentricity | Genius | Society | Strength | Time | Society | Danger |
The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy forever.
Contentment | Grief | Happy | Hope | Man | Nothing | World |