This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.
That's the down-town frieze, principally the church steeple, a black line beside a white line; and the stack of the electric plant, a black line drawn on flat air.
Meaning |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
All efforts and all attention should now be concentrated on the next step — the search after forms of the transition or the approach to the proletarian revolution.
Experience | History | Majority | Meaning | Power | Price | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Time |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Poor Peasants’ Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. But between the kulaks, who are a small minority, and the poor or semi-proletarians there is the section of the middle peasants. The Soviet government has never declared or conducted any struggle against them. Any steps or measures to the contrary must be condemned most vigorously and stopped. The socialist government must pursue a policy of agreement with the middle peasants.
Meaning | Power | Revolution |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
But then what should I have done with you, Nina, how should I have disposed of the store of sadness that had gradually accumulated as a result of our seemingly carefree, but really hopeless meetings?
Disguise | Dreams | Evil | Life | Life | Promise | Reality | Thought | Thought |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don't care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral facade -- demons placed there only to show they have been booted out. Actually, I'm a mild old gentleman who loathes cruelty.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The wedding was a quiet affair, and when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I hate women because they always know where things are.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Martin especially concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust.
The observation of the breathing rhythm is suggested as a support to those who cannot arrive at the spontaneous stillness of total mind without some support. But to depend upon the support for a long period is undesirable and unwarranted. One has to discover for oneself whether one is learning self-reliance through the support or not. Simple observation of the breathing rhythm culminates into silence or total awareness within a few weeks. Secondly the hour of silence should enable one to live in awareness throughout the day.
Discovery | Existence | Freedom | Journey | Meaning | Religion | Revolution | Truth | Discovery |
We have accepted the watertight compartments of society, the fragmentation of living as factual and necessary. We live in relationship to these fragments and accept the internalized divisions—the various roles we play, the contradictory value systems, the opposing motives and priorities—as reality. We are at odds with ourselves internally; we believe that the inner is fundamentally different from the outer, that what is me is quite separate from the not-me, that divisions among people and nations are necessary, and yet we wonder why there are tensions, conflicts, wars in the world. The conflicts begin with minds that believe in fragmentation and are ignorant of wholeness.
Acceptance | Action | Awareness | Culture | Desire | Meaning | Passion | Peace | Problems | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Service | Society | Will | Society | Awareness |
Compassion does not manifest itself when we live on the surface of existence, when we try to piece together a comfortable life out of easily available fragments. Compassion requires a plunge to the depths of life—where oneness is reality and divisions merely an illusion. If we dwell at the superficial layers of being, we’ll be overly conscious of the apparent differences in human beings on the physical and mental level, and of the superficial difference in cultures and behavior. If we penetrate to the essentials, however, we will discover that there is nothing fundamental that differentiates any human being from another, or any human being from any other living creature. All are manifestations of life, created with the same life principles and nurtured by the same life-support systems. Oneness is absolute reality; differentiation has only transitory, relative reality.
Learning | Meaning | Question | Will | Understand |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
In painting I want to say something comforting in the way that music is comforting.
Heart | Inspiration | Meaning | Soul |