This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Without doubt it is natural to include that love long what we love so much.
The man is perishable. It can, but perish in resistant, and if nothing we are booked, not do not that this is a justice!
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Every time our intellect thus succeeds in substituting some principles and causes of knowledge for knowledge itself, it is on the right road to wisdom. As a matter of fact, it has already found wisdom, at least in part, while awaiting the day when, fully aware of what the absolutely first principles and first causes truly are, it begins to see everything else in their light.
Man | Principles | Rest | Wise |
A willingness enemy s' attaches me to hold in a state of suspension and obstacles to me fooled by the things vague and the expectations evasive.
The man who loves the higher it gets, the more it is bound, it is more loved, more like it.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Why should those eminently rational beings, the scientists, deliberately prefer to the simple notions of design, or purposiveness, in nature, the arbitrary notions of blind force, chance, emergence, sudden variation, and similar ones? Simply because they much prefer a complete absence of intelligibility to the presence of a nonscientific intelligibility.
Cause | Ideas | Knowing | Man | Nature | Need | Organization | Purpose | Purpose | Sense |
Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.
Integrity | Man | Men | Relationship | Responsibility | Title | Wisdom |
Mankind did not multiply words without necessity, especially in the beginning: for they were, at no small trouble to invent and to retain them.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
The knowledge of GodÂ’s existence thereby acquires a universal significance and absolute certitude. Indeed, even those who do not understand the philosophical proofs of the existence of God are informed about this truth by divine revelation. Philosophers or not, everyone to whom his word is communicated through the preaching of scripture and who receives it as coming from him, in this way knows that God exists. Philosophers themselves need to remember that God has revealed his existence and to hold onto that truth by faith.
Absolute | Man | Philosophy | Rest |
The more a man has what he desired, he cherishes most it has.
When money represents so many things, not to love it would be to love nearly nothing. To forget true needs can be only a weak moderation; but to know the value of money and to sacrifice it always, maybe to duty, maybe even to delicacy,—that is real virtue.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation. As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.
Man |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
For a writer, memory is everything. But then you have to test it; how good is it, really? Whether it's wrong or not, I'm beyond caring. It is what it is. As Norman Mailer would say, "It's existential." He went to his grave without knowing what that word meant.