This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence.
Beauty | Comfort | Energy | Eternal | Excellence | God | Health | Joy | Laughter | Light | Pain | Passion | Riches | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | World | Riches | Hardship | Beauty |
Earnestness is the devotion of all the faculties. It is the cause of patience; gives endurance; overcome pain; strengthens weakness; braves dangers; sustains hope; make light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.
Cause | Devotion | Earnestness | Endurance | Hope | Light | Pain | Patience | Sense | Weakness | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina. The imagination is but the faculty of glassing images; and it is with exceeding difficulty, and by the imperative will of the reasoning faculty resolved to mislead it, that it glasses images which have no prototype in truth and nature.
Custom | Difficulty | Imagination | Judgment | Nature | Observation | Power | Precision | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Precision |
The mind in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
Body | God | Heaven | Life | Life | Light | Mind | Nature | Revelation | Wisdom |
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 |
Georges Cuvier, fully Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier
Those who devote themselves to the peaceful study of nature have but little temptation to launch out upon the tempestuous sea of ambition; they will scarcely be hurried away by the more violent or cruel passions, the ordinary failings of those ardent persons who do not control their conduct; but, pure as the objects of their researches, they will feel for everything about them the same benevolence which they see nature display toward all her productions.
Ambition | Benevolence | Conduct | Control | Display | Little | Nature | Study | Temptation | Will | Wisdom | Temptation |
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.
The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and the facts established by experiment.
Consciousness | Doctrine | Existence | Experiment | Wisdom | World |
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.