This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
The Self is within all, and it is without all. – Isha Upanishad
Body | Consciousness | Day | Heaven | Light | Mortal | Self | World |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!
Body |
If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |
The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world.
In the outside world, all forms of intelligence, whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.
Atomic bomb | Opinion | People | Talking | Think |
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
On the wisdom with which we bring science to bear in the war against disease, in the creation of new industries, and in the strengthening of our Armed Forces depends in large measure our future as a nation.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The burning ambition exile the pleasures of youth to govern alone.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We must not be timid from a fear of committing faults: the greatest fault of all is to deprive oneself of experience.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Awareness of dying slander their lives.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
So that the wise men were obliged to rule themselves like lunatics to shun grim death, seeing the biggest maniac now was king.
The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist.
Body | Knowledge | Men | Nature | Responsibility | Understand |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Passions have taught men passion.
Opinion |
Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming
The righteous person caries on circumspectly and serenely whatever happens, and is undeviatingly harmonious even when asleep and dreaming. The malevolent person lapses into violent behavior instead of discussing things, and betrays anger even while speaking musically with laughing words.
Body |
The agrarian would divide all the property in the community equally among its members. - But if so divided today, industry on the one hand, and idleness on the other, would make it unequal on the morrow. - There is no agrarianism in the providence of God.