This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light - it springs up amid tears and clouds - it is a reflection of the eternal sun - it is an assurance of calm - it is the sign of a great covenant between God and man - it is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light.
Earth | Eternal | God | Heaven | Light | Man | Peace | Reflection | Tears | God |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.
Reflection | Study | Time | Waste |
Law is a reflection and a source of prejudice. It both enforces and suggests forms of bias.
Law | Prejudice | Reflection |
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
The wider the scope of my reflection on the present and past, the more I am impressed by their mockery of human plans in every transaction.
Mockery | Past | Present | Reflection |
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
Transparent Man, who is seen and seen through, foolish, who has nothing left to hide, who has become transparent through self-acceptance; his soul is loved, wholly revealed, wholly existential; he is just what he is, freed from paranoid concealment, from the knowledge of his secrets and his secret knowledge; his transparency serves as a prism for the world and the not-world. For it is impossible reflectively to know thyself; only the last reflection of an obituary may tell the truth, and only God knows our real names.
Acceptance | Concealment | God | Know thyself | Knowledge | Man | Nothing | Reflection | Self | Soul | Truth | World | God |
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
What is thought to be the responsible public opinion is, at any given time, a reflection of the needs and interests of the corporate technostructure.
Always vote for principle, though you vote alone, and you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost.
Discourses on morality and reflection on human nature are the best means we can make use of to improve our minds, gain a true knowledge of ourselves, and recover our souls out of the vice, ignorance, and prejudice which naturally cleave to them.
Human nature | Ignorance | Knowledge | Means | Morality | Nature | Prejudice | Reflection |
For the reality to which the artist and the mystic are exposed, is in fact, the same. It is of their own inmost truth brought to consciousness: by the mystic, in direct confrontation, and by the artist, through reflection in the masterworks of his art. The fact that the nature of the artist (as a microcosm) and the nature of the universe (as the macrocosm) are two aspects of the same reality (respectively, as a minute part of the whole, experienced from within, and as the whole, viewed from without... accounts sufficiently for that creative interplay of discovery and recognition which alerts the artist to the possibility of a revelatory composition in which outer and inner realities are recognized as the same.
Art | Consciousness | Discovery | Nature | Reality | Reflection | Truth | Universe | Discovery |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Action and reflection should ideally complement and support each other. Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent.
Action | Reflection |
God enters by a private door into every individual. Long prior to reflection is the thinking of the mind.
God | Individual | Mind | Reflection | Thinking |
Every substance is only the reflection or rhyme of some truth.
Reflection | Truth |
It is wrong to believe that frank sentiments and the candor of the mind are the exclusive share of the young; they ornament oftentimes old age, upon which they seem to spread a chaste reflection of the modest graces of their younger days, where they shine with the same brightness as those flowers which are often seen peeping, fresh and laughing, from among ruins.
Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Art | Reflection | Study | Art |
It is stated in the sacred Zohar that "When the tzaddik departs he is to be found in all worlds more than in his lifetime." Now this needs to be understood. For, granted that he is to be found increasingly in the supernal worlds, because he ascends to there; but how can he be found more in this world? ... This can be explained based on [the maxim] that the life of a tzaddik is not a physical life but a spiritual life, consisting wholly of faith, awe, and love of G‑d... While the tzaddik was alive on earth, these three qualities were contained in their physical vessel and garment (i.e. the body) on the plane of physical space... All his disciples receive but a reflection of these attributes, a ray radiating beyond this vessel by means of his holy utterances and thoughts... But after his passing... whoever is close to him can receive a [far loftier dimension] of these three qualities, since they are no longer confined within a [material] vessel, nor bounded by physical space... Thus it is very easy for his disciples to receive their part of their master's quintessential spirit, each according to the level of his loving attachment (hitkashrut) and closeness to the tzaddik during his lifetime and after his death.
Life | Life | Love | Means | Qualities | Receive | Reflection | Sacred |
It would be of no use to inquire into the nature of our thoughts. The first reflection we make on ourselves is sufficient to convince us, that we have no possible means of satisfying this inquiry. Every man is conscious of his thought; he distinguishes it perfectly from every thing else; he even distinguishes one thought from another ; and that is sufficient. If we go any further, we stray from a point which we apprehend so clearly, that it can never lead us into error.