This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We possess a hidden higher self, the spark of divinity within the soul, which reflects this transcendental reality in our lives. By fulfilling certain necessary conditions, such as making ourselves more loving and compassionate, we can clear away the mental and emotional static that separates us from this inner reality, enabling the higher self to assume a central, guiding role in our lives. This awakening - called enlightenment, deliverance, or salvation in the various traditions - is the goal or purpose of human life. When we achieve this complete transformation of consciousness, we awaken from our limited, often painful condition and reconnect with our true nature.
Awakening | Consciousness | Divinity | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Salvation | Self | Soul | Wisdom |
There are two persons in the world we never see as they are - one’s self and one’s other self.
There is a broad distinction between character and reputation, for one may be destroyed by slander, while the other can never be harmed, save by its possessor. Reputation is in no man's keeping. You and I cannot determine what other men shall think and say about us. We can only determine what they ought to think of us and say about us.
Character | Distinction | Man | Men | Reputation | Slander | Wisdom | Think |
How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls, a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one’s children rich.
Children | Generosity | Luxury | Selfishness | Wife | Wisdom | World |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the 'thorn in the flesh' is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.
Defects | Imperfection | Life | Life | Light | Perfection | Progress | Suffering | Wholeness | Wisdom |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense- he is "collective man" - one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.
Aims | Art | Ends | Free will | Man | Mankind | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Will | Wisdom | Art |
Religion is really experiencing a state in which there is creation. This is not an idea, a process. It can be realized when there is freedom from self. There can be freedom from self only through understanding the self in relationship; but there can be no understanding in isolation.
Freedom | Isolation | Relationship | Religion | Self | Understanding | Wisdom |
If a man builds a better mousetrap than his neighbor, the world will not only beat a path to his door, it will make newsreels of him and his wife in beach pajamas, it will discuss his diet and his health, it will publish heart-throb stories of his love life.
Better | Diet | Health | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Wife | Will | Wisdom | World |
Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self control.
Consequences | Contention | Control | Man | Self | Temper | Time | Wisdom | Loss |
To be at peace with self, to find company and nourishment in self - this would be the test of the free and productive psyche.
On one level, life is the process of seeking out and enjoying experiences - from the transcendent to the tragic. Life has as cyclical pattern of movement and appreciation; even when you’re not doing anything, you’re probably in a situation you sought. On another level, life is the experience of the self’s interaction with the world. The self can be broken down into three main elements and their corresponding activities: first, the heart (knowing compassion, receiving and giving love); second, the intellect (acquiring and digesting information); third, the senses (acting and being acted upon). It is the soul, however, that focuses and inspires all three the soul gives us resilience -an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship... The meaning of life can’t be understood without first looking at the self and its interaction with the world. In effect, this amounts to examining the inner workings of the soul of the universe.
Appreciation | Compassion | Experience | Giving | Heart | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Resilience | Self | Soul | Universe | Wisdom | World | Intellect |
Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always behind time.
Business | Confidence | Habit | Man | Nothing | Punctuality | Reputation | Time | Wisdom | Business |
André Maurois, born born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog
Some truths between husband and wife must be spoken with sweetness. Wounded vanity is fatal to love. It makes one hate the person who inflicted the wound. In married conversation, as in surgery, the knife must be used with care.
Care | Conversation | Hate | Husband | Love | Wife | Wisdom | Truths |
George Lyttleton, 1st Baron Lyttleton of Frankley
How much the wife is dearer than the bride!