This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Humility is the light of the understanding.
Humility | Light | Understanding | Wisdom |
In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.
Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |
Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
Let your religion be seen. Lamps do not talk, but they do shine. A light house sounds no drum, it beats no gong; yet, far over the waters, its friendly light is seen by the mariner.
Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads and the strength that lifts men on and up in the great struggles of scientific pursuits and of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty, and makes a pleasure of duty.
Difficulty | Duty | Endurance | Enthusiasm | Labor | Light | Men | Pleasure | Strength | Success | Wisdom |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Hatred is like fire - it makes even light rubbish deadly.
Noël du Fail, Seigneur de La Hérissaye
The candle which goes before gives more light than the one which comes behind.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being.
This should not come as a surprise, for indeed ‘out there’ there is no light and no colour, and there are only electromagnetic waves; ‘out there’ there is no sound and no music, there are only periodic variations of the air pressure; ‘out there’ there is no heat and no cold, there are only moving molecules with more or less mean kinetic energy, and so on. Finally, for sure, ‘out there’ there is no pain.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
We know well enough how little light science has so far been able to throw on the problems that surround us. But however much ado the philosophers may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient, persevering research, in which everything is subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can gradually bring about a change.
Change | Enough | Light | Little | Problems | Research | Science | Wisdom |
Garrett Hardin, fully Garrett James Hardin
Beyond the limits of his confining skin, no man can own any thing. “Property” refers not to things owned but to the rights granted by society; they must periodically be re-examined in the light of social justice.
Justice | Light | Man | Property | Rights | Society | Wisdom |
Sometimes prayer is more than a light before us; it is alight within us.
God made both tears and laughter, and both for kind purposes; for as laughter enables mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair and madness; and laughter is on top of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.
Despair | God | Laughter | Madness | Mirth | Reason | Sorrow | Tears | Wisdom |
There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.
Melancholy | Mirth | Wisdom |
Leaves seem light and useless, and idle and wavering, and changeable - they even dance; yet God has made them part of the oak. In so doing, He has give us a lesson, not to deny the stout-heartedness within because we see the lightsomeness without.