This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of the saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.
Ability | Imagination | Means | Space | Thought | Time | Wisdom | World | Thought |
Guy de Maupassant, fully Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant
To love very much is to love inadequately; we love - that is all. Love cannot be modified without being nullified. Love is a short word but it contains everything. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation.
The universe is infinite response. Mentally understood, it is all possibilities. Every point of view is possible, and because it ‘exists’ it is right... The universe gives more than we give... Unless one sees the world differently, unless new ideas touch our consciousness we cannot rise to any apprehension of the second system. To all that we know naturally we must add something, and in this volume this addition is taken in terms of adding first the dimension of Time to our own lives and considering what this means for oneself.
Consciousness | Ideas | Means | Right | System | Time | Universe | Wisdom | World |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
What we commonly call friendships are nothing but acquaintance and familiarities, either occasionally contracted or upon some design, by means of which there happens some little intercourse between our souls.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages call inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation , in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed - I have never had any choice... Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity... The involuntary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all; one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression.
Choice | Divinity | Freedom | Inspiration | Means | Nature | Necessity | Power | Revelation | Sense | Superstition | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
William C. Menninger, fully William Claire Menninger
Security means inner harmony of the personality with the environment. Man must learn how to balance emotional stress against his own emotional supports. And he must be mature.
Balance | Harmony | Man | Means | Personality | Security | Wisdom | Learn |
The danger of education, I have found, is that it so easily confuses means with ends. Worse than that, it quite easily forgets both and devotes itself merely to the mass production of uneducated graduates - people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade which they and their contemporaries have conspired to call “life.”
Danger | Education | Ends | Life | Life | Means | People | Wisdom | Danger |
We need to get rid of some false meanings that we give to the words eternal and eternity. The psychological idea connected with eternal life cannot be limited to the view that man is changed into another state at death, merely by the act of dying. It would be far more correct to say that it refers, first of all, to some change that man is capable of undergoing now, in this life, and one that is connected with the attainment of unity. The modern term psychology means literally the science of the soul. But in former times there actually existed a science of the soul based upon the idea that man is an imperfect state but capable of reaching a further state... No totality-act is possible; the will is separate from knowledge, the feeling from intellect.
Attainment | Change | Death | Eternal | Eternity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Psychology | Science | Soul | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Mankind must not be governed with too much severity; we ought to make a prudent use of the means which nature has given us to conduct them. If we inquire into the cause of all human corruptions, we shall find that they proceed form the impunity of criminals, and not from the moderation of punishments.
Cause | Conduct | Mankind | Means | Moderation | Nature | Wisdom | Moderation |
When we consider absolute reality, there is no end, no beginning; emptiness is the same as fulfillness, just seen from a different perspective. We say that this coffee cup is empty; but empty means filled with space, filled with possibilities, ready for anything: milk, water, tea wine. Every moment of time, every point in space, is completely empty, completely open for what wants to come. That is why it can be filled.
Absolute | Beginning | Means | Reality | Space | Time | Wants | Wisdom |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.
Individual | Means | Wants | Wisdom | Leader |