This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The reward of the adventure of life is freedom. The irony of the adventure is that we were free before we set out, but we needed to learn that freedom was not to be found where we fantasized it to be. We needed to learn, like our old friend Dorothy from Kansas, that there’s no place like home, because there is no place but Home. When we learn that God is everywhere, that Love fills all space, and that Truth is the very Ground of our Being, we may surely release the little to embrace the All.
Adventure | Freedom | Friend | God | Irony | Life | Life | Little | Love | Reward | Space | Truth | God | Learn | Old |
People are happiest when they have either accomplished something - however small - that they originally considered a challenge, or when they allow themselves to see a familiar landscape in a new way. People who are generally happy do this all the time. They expose themselves to new experiences, which may or may not produce immediate pleasure or comfort. They often take risks. Unhappy people almost never do.
A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.
Adventure | Civilization | Contrast | Past | Race |
The search for God is, indeed, an entirely personal undertaking. By the exercise of the normal activities of his consciousness, man may endeavor to reach an invisible reality both immanent in and transcending the material world. thus, he throws himself into the most audacious adventure that one can dare.
Adventure | Consciousness | God | Man | Reality | Search | World | God |
A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.
Adventure | Civilization | Contrast | Past | Race |
Evil is the brute motive force of fragmentary purpose, disregarding the eternal vision. Evil is overruling, retarding, hurting. The power of God is the worship He inspires. The worship of God is not a rule of safety – it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.
Adventure | Death | Eternal | Evil | Force | God | Hope | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Rule | Spirit | Vision | Worship | God |
Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.
Never forget that life can be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are most highly cultivated in their mind and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external good, than among those who possess external good to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities; and this is not only matter of experience, but, if reflected upon, will easily appear to be in accordance with reason.
Character | Experience | Good | Mind | Pleasure | Qualities | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
The life of animals, then, may be divided into two acts - procreation and feeding; for on these two acts all their interests and life concentrate... And whatsoever is in conformity with nature is pleasant, and all animals pursue pleasure in keeping with their nature.
Conformity | Life | Life | Nature | Pleasure |