This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer. " - Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome
"I consider that this shift [to an emphasis on our “capacity to identify with the larger collective of all beings” ] is essential to our survival at this point in history precisely because it can serve in lieu of morality and because moralising is ineffective. Sermons seldom hinder us from pursuing our self-interest, so we need to be a little more enlightened about what our self-interest is. It would not occur to me, for example, to exhort you to refrain from cutting off your leg. That wouldn’t occur to me or to you, because your leg is part of you. Well, so are the trees in the Amazon Basin; they are our external lungs. We are just beginning to wake up to that. We are gradually discovering that we are our world." - Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy
"The purpose of our study is that God may reveal Itself as our individual consciousness: I am the Word become flesh. The beginning of wisdom is when we draw our attention away from the outer world, from the world of effect or appearance, and begin to realize that power is not in it, but in me. All power is given unto me. I have dominion over everything that appears in the world of effect." - Joel S. Goldsmith, fully Joel Solomon Goldsmith
"Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose ... not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember." - Anne Sullivan, fully Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Macy
"Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification. " - John Donne
"We come to understand the nature of the human person by coming to understand human capacities, which we come to understand by coming to understand human acts, which we come to understand by coming to understand the objects of those acts. The neglect of this methodological principle, a principle announced and applied by St. Thomas from beginning to end of his works, can seriously distort ethical discourse" - John Finnis
"Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education. " - John Hersey, fully John Richard Hersey
"Man is gradually losing his ability to be in charge of his own life. He is beginning to regard himself not only as a self-contradiction but as an impossibility." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"We fail to wonder... This is the tragedy of every man... Life is routine, and routine is resistance to the wonder. Awe is an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves... The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe... Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality... Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith. We must grow in awe in order to reach faith... The ineffable inhabits the magnificent and the common, the grandiose and the tiny facts of reality alike... Slight and simple things may be a glimpse of God? kinship with the spirit of being? an eternal flash of a will?" - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The beginning of wisdom is awe. Ultimate meaning and ultimate wisdom are not found within the world but in God, and the only way to wisdom is… through our relationship to God. That relationship is awe. Awe, in this sense, is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding. Awe is itself an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end." - Jorge Luis Borges
"A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line...To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes and in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its colour, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its colour, reveal the substance of its truth -- disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the visible world." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
"Great conquerors, we read, have been both animated, and also, in a great measure, formed by reading the exploits of former conquerors. Why may not the same effect be expected from the history of philosophy to philosophers? May not even more be expected in this case? The wars of many of those conquerors, who received this advantage from history, had no proper connection with former wars: they were only analogous to them. Whereas the whole business of philosophy, diversified as it is, is but one; it being one and the same great scheme, that all philosophers, of all ages and nations, have been conducting, from the beginning of the world; so that the work being the same, the. labours of one are not only analogous to those of of another, but in an immediate manner subservient to them; and one philosopher succeeds another in the same field; as one Roman proconsul succeeded another in carrying on the same war, and pursuing the same conquests, in the same country. In this case, an intimate knowledge of what has been done before us cannot but greatly facilitate our future progress, if it be not absolutely necessary to it." - Joseph Priestley
"The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable." - Joyce Carol Oates
"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." - Karl Barth
"Life, by which I mean my life, is a great, or probably the greatest, design, from its very beginning to its end, the end that, I think, is unlikely to exist. Each and every bit of life is a part of the design. Design exists as the consequence of the ultimate questioner's vanity. And my mission is to find the most fundamental truth, which probably and exclusively involves the nature of the existence of the ultimate questioner." - Kedar Joshi
"The form of the formless. The image of the imageless. It is called indefinable and beyond imagination. Stand before it and there is no beginning. Follow it and there is no end. Stay with the ancient Tao, move with the present. Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven. " - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder. " - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined." - Learned Hand, fully Billings Learned Hand
"It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"The point, being indivisible, occupies no space. That which occupies no space is nothing. The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"Experience is never at fault; it is only your judgment that is in error in promising itself such results from experience as are not caused by our experiments. For having given a beginning, what follows from it must necessarily be a natural development of such a beginning, unless it has been subject to a contrary influence, while, if it is affected by any contrary influence, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning will be found to partake of this contrary influence in a greater or less degree in proportion as the said influence is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning. " - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"A good beginning makes a good end. " - Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
"The beginning of existence is nourishment; therefore, food is the beginning of wisdom. The first condition of putting any thing into your head and heart, is to put something into your stomach." - Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
"In politeness, as in many other things connected with the formation of character, people in general begin outside, when they should begin inside; instead of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to form the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust the heart to chance influences." - Lydia Maria Child
"Annihilation means, with the Buddhistical philosophy, only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be; for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish, i.e., change that shape; therefore, as something temporary, though seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, Maya; for, as eternity has neither beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were, like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone and passed away for ever; hence, even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter, so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the spiritual entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvana. He exists in spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely annihilated, and thus will die no more, for spirit alone is no Maya, but the only REALITY in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms." - Helena Blavatsky, aka Helena Petrovna "H.P." Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn
"You have no beginning,though you are the beginning of all. It is you who creates, upholds and dissolves the worlds." - Mahanirvana Tantra, Tantra of the Great Liberation NULL
"We are always beginning to live, but are never living." - Manilius, fully Marcus Manilius NULL
"We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life." - Maria Montessori
"How can we speak of Democracy or Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life, not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue, whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by elders who say: “your will must disappear and mine prevail!”—how can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom?" - Maria Montessori
"The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction? That's a government subsidy of families, yet we resent putting money directly into public housing. We take our deduction for dependent care yet resent putting money directly into child care. Common sense and necessity are beginning to erode old notions of the private invasion of family life, because so many families are in trouble. " - Marian Wright Edelman
"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
"Reflection is the beginning of reform." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
"Religions are metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives. A spiritual life allows us to move beyond the ego into something more universal. Religious experience carries us outside of clock time into eternal time. We open ourselves into something more complete and beautiful. This bigger vista is perhaps the most magnificent aspect of a religious experience. There is a sense in which Karl Marx was correct when he said that religion is the opiate of the people. However, he was wrong to scoff at this. Religion can give us skills for climbing up on onto a ledge above our suffering and looking down at it with a kind and open mind. This helps us calm down and connect to all of the world's sufferers. Since the beginning of human time, we have yearned for peace in the face of death, loss, anger and fear. In fact, it is often trauma that turns us toward the sacred, and it is the sacred that saves us." - Mary Pipher, aka Mary Elizabeth Pipher or Mary Bray Pipher
"The beginning is always today." - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"The beginning is always today." - Mary Wollstonecraft
"A strong beginning is a good thing only when coupled with a strong finish." - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
"The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's." - Mason Cooley
"I will also tell you a secret. We have to will one another: this is the beginning of conscious love. " - Maurice Nicoll
"Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior." - Max Cleland, fully Joseph Maxwell Cleland
"At the beginning of every act of faith, there is often a seed of fear. For great acts of faith are seldom born out of calm calculation." - Max Lucado
"Questions often make us uncomfortable, especially good questions, but they can be the source of insight and the beginning of progress." - Max DePree, alternatively De Pree or Depree
"In a moment of crisis we don't act out of reasoned judgment but on our conditioned reflexes. We may be able to send men to the moon, but we'd better remember we're still closely related to Pavlov's dog. Think about driving a car: only the beginning driver thinks as he performs each action; the seasoned driver's body works kinesthetically . . .A driver prevents an accident because of his conditioned reflexes; hands and feet respond more quickly than thought. I'm convinced the same thing is true in all other kinds of crisis, too. We react to our conditioning built up of every single decision we've made all our lives; who we have used as our mirrors, as our points of reference. If our slow and reasoned decisions are generally wise, those which have to be made quickly are apt to be wise, too. If our reasoned decisions are foolish, so will be those of the sudden situation." - Madeleine L’Engle
"Before he can know Who he is, man has to unlearn the mass of illusory knowledge hehas burdened himself with on the interminable journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. It is only through love that you can begin to unlearn, and, eventually, put an end to all that you do not know. God-love penetrates all illusion, while no amount of illusion can dim God-love. Start by learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the less you remember yourself; and when you completely forget yourself, you find me as the Source of all Love." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
"What happened yesterday? Nothing. What will happen tomorrow? Nothing. All happens now . . . the eternal NOW from the beginningless beginning to the endless end." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani