This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?
Change | Culture | Earth | Government | Heaven | Honor | Human race | Life | Life | Peace | People | Race | Rest | Rites |
Hillel said: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man; that is the essence of the Torah, the rest is commentary: go and learn.
The peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, “Do this”; reason, judgment, prudence say “It is your peril if you do!” One desire fights against another. And so the man is rent asunder. There must be the harmonizing of all the being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
Conscience | Desire | God | Judgment | Life | Life | Man | Passion | Peace | Peril | Prudence | Prudence | Reason | Rest | Spirit | God |
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know how much I am enjoying it… That’s the way the rest of my life would need to be lived.
It turns out that our notions of what a “self” is and how it might feel fulfilled have no more objective status than most of the rest of reality. It seems we make ourselves up as we go alone.
To approach the living question with the mind alone is impossible. The intellect must be coupled with feeling in order to stir a person to authentic inquiry. Real philosophy recognizes that ideas have sensations and emotions connected with them, and that one responds to them with the whole of oneself.
Emotions | Ideas | Inquiry | Mind | Order | Philosophy | Question | Intellect |
John Oxenham, pen name for Wiliam Arthur Dunkerley
To every soul there openeth a high way and a low; the high soul climbs the high way, the low soul gropes the low. And in between, on these misty flats, the rest drift to and fro. To every soul there openeth a high way and a low; and every man decideth which way his soul will go.
Know thou the soul as riding in a chariot, the body as the chariot. Know thou the intellect as the chariot-driver, and the mind as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses; the objects of sense, what they range over, the self combined with senses and mind, wise men call `the enjoyer.’ He who has not understanding, whose mind is not constantly held firm – his senses are uncontrolled, like the vicious horses of a chariot-driver.
Body | Men | Mind | Self | Sense | Soul | Understanding | Wise | Intellect |
Above the senses is the mind. Above the mind is the intellect. Above the intellect is the ego. Above the ego is the unmanifested seed, the Primal Cause. And verily beyond the unmanifested seed is the self, the unconditioned Knowing whom one attains to freedom and achieves immortality.
Cause | Ego | Freedom | Immortality | Knowing | Mind | Self | Intellect |
Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL
I do not understand how people declare themselves to be believers in God, and at the same time think that God has handed over to a little body of man all truth, and that they are guardians of the rest of humanity.
Body | God | Humanity | Little | Man | People | Rest | Time | Truth | God | Think | Understand |