This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A man selects his enemies, his friends make themselves, and from these friends he is apt to suffer.
William Rothenstein, fully Sir William Rothenstein
There are fashions in immortality as there are trivial fashions. Books and pictures read differently to different generations.
Books | Immortality | Wisdom |
To be confined by the feet with friends is better than to walk in a garden with strangers.
Temples fall, statues decay, mausoleums perish, eloquent phrases declaimed are forgotten, but good books are immortal.
People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego.
Challenge | Competition | Ego | Enough | Good | Life | Life | People | Philosophy | Sense | Vision | Work | Friends | Learn | Understand |
Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, simply known as Ali NULL
Believe me, a thousand friends suffice thee not; In a single enemy thou has more than enough.
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
The world is the book where eternal Wisdom wrote its own ideas, and the living temple where, depicting its own acts and likeness, it decorated the height and the depth with living statues; so that every spirit, to guard against profanity, should read and contemplate here art and government, and each should say: “I fill the universe, seeing God in all things.” But we, souls bound to books and dead temples, copied with many mistakes from the living, place these things before such instruction. O ills, quarrels, ignorance, labors, pains, make us aware of our falling away: O let us, in God’s name, return to the original.
Art | Books | Eternal | God | Government | Ideas | Ignorance | Spirit | Universe | Wisdom | World | Art | God |
The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation, which we call death, is no proof that they cease to exist.