This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
The sun is 93 million miles from the Earth; it is the center of the solar system, and by the power of gravity holds every planet in its orbit. Yet that very same sun can ripen a bunch of grapes as though that was all it had to do.
Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness - mysterious, universal, inevitable as death.
Accident | Death | Disease | Existence | Fear | Illusion | Impulse | Inevitable | Love | Lying | Morality | Mystery | Necessity | Shame | Weakness | Happiness |
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold, but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp is of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the season with him from the south.
Blessings | Cheerfulness | Gold | Happy | Heart | Hope | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Sympathy |
There is no such thing as preaching patience into people unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurly-burly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to and riding out the gale.
Life | Life | Lying | Man | Patience | People | Practice | World | Learn |
We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.
Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all our intuitions. With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves time void of phenomena. Time is therefore given a priori. In it alone is all reality of phenomena possible. These may all be annihilated in thought, but in itself, as the universal condition of their possibility, cannot be so annulled.
Lying | Phenomena | Reality | Regard | Thought | Time | Think |
Blessings we enjoy daily; and for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises; but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made the sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers and showers and meat and content.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles at the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; but thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amidst the war of elements, the wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
By anticipation we suffer misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
Anticipation | Earth | Eternity | Happiness |
The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance, as this of which the upanishadic authors tell. Indeed, the first and most essential service of a mythology is this one, of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being. And the second service, then, is cosmological: of representing the universe and whole spectacle of nature, both as known to the mind and as beheld by the eye, as an epiphany of such kind that when lightning flashes, or a setting sun ignites the sky, or a deer is seen standing alerted, the exclamation "Ah!" may be uttered as a recognition of divinity.
Abundance | Divinity | Epiphany | Heart | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | Sense | Service | Universe | Wonder |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
The toddler is allowed to regulate his own exploratory behavior. What occurs as a result of this entire mechanism is that nature’s imperative to explore the world at large is overwhelmed by the greater imperative to avoid the pain of a broken relationship with the life-giving caregiver. What will be developed in the child is a capacity for deception as he tries to maintain some vestige of integrity while outwardly appearing to conform. Living a lie to survive a lying culture, the child forgets the truth of who he really is.
Behavior | Capacity | Culture | Giving | Integrity | Life | Life | Lying | Nature | Pain | Relationship | Truth | Will | World | Child |
Of all the virtues, is not wisdom the one which the mass of mankind are always claiming, and which most arrouses in them a spirit of contention and lying conceit of wisdom?
Contention | Lying | Mankind | Spirit | Wisdom |
Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.
Action |
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
Rights |