This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The island of existence is washed by the two oceans of eternity and nothingness, eroding it into what is less and elevating it into what is more than existence, into nothingness and into a higher reality, namely, the identity of event and value, the unity of being and meaning.
P. A. R. Janet and G. Sèailles
The law of duty demands moral perfection or holiness. But this is impossible in our present life, therefore it can only be attained by an indefinite progress, and this progress is only possible under the hypothesis of an existence and a personality that re indefinitely prolonged.
Duty | Existence | Hypothesis | Law | Life | Life | Perfection | Personality | Present | Progress |
We live not only in time and space but also in the knowledge of God. The events in the world reflect in him, and all existence is coexistence with God. Time and space are not the limits of the world. Our life occurs here and in the knowledge of God.
Events | Existence | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Space | Time | World |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
The future must have as its basis the consciousness of sanctity in existence – in common things, in the events of human life, in the gradually comprehended interlocking whole revealed to the human desire for knowledge, n the benedictions of beauty and love, in the catharsis, the sacred purging, of the moral drama in which character is pitted against fate and even deepest tragedy may uplift the mind.
Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Desire | Events | Existence | Fate | Future | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Sacred | Tragedy | Fate | Beauty |
[A majority of people] are not theoretical atheists; they are practical atheists. They do not deny the existence of God with their lips, but they are continually denying his existence with their lives.
Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL
The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed.
The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.
Existence | Imagination | Truth |
The artist's imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn't it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.
Existence | Imagination | Nature | Power |
Love is the creative power of the universe that manifests as strength and beauty. To love is to know God and the inmost nature of the ultimate Reality… Love is letting go of fear and worry… Love consecrates life… By letting go of separateness we see love as the reflection of our own self and harmony in the inconsistencies and imperfections of the existence and explore joy in the midst of the pains and problems of life.
Beauty | Existence | Fear | God | Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Power | Problems | Reality | Reflection | Self | Strength | Universe | Worry | God |
Joseph Mazzini, aka Giuseppe Mazzini
Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim.
Existence | Life | Life | Mission | Philosophy | Religion | Science |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas!
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
The relation of existence to time is characterized by two polar elements: temporality and uninterruptedness. Existence is evanescent and always faces the prospect of annihilation, of being thrown out of the stream of time, yet it also exhibits some degree of permanence as the continuous duration in time. Without an element of constancy there could be no permanence within temporality and no knowledge of reality, since our categories of reason are “mirrors, in which the things are reflected in the light of their constancy… Things perish within time, while time itself is everlasting… The present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, an act of creation.
Beginning | Constancy | Existence | Knowledge | Light | Present | Reality | Reason | Time |
The idea of creation expresses the conviction that neither blind chance nor an impersonal mechanical order is behind the existence of the universe. Behind the orderly processes of nature stands the primordial act of God’s concern. There are processes because there was an event of creation.