This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In humor, there is truth. We need to take humor more seriously.
True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us.
Properly, there is no other knowledge but that which is got by working; the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools; a thing floating in the clouds. endless logic vortices, till we try and fix it.
Hypothesis | Knowledge | Logic | Rest |
The essence of humor is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence.
Existence | Humor | Sensibility |
Modern thought is the prison of the soul and stands between man and his spiritual mind. The logical mind cannot know absolute faith, nor can it know pure thought, for the logic feeds upon logic and does not accept things that cannot be known and proven by the flesh. Thus man has created a prison for himself and for his spirit, because he lacks belief and purity of thought. Faith needs no proof nor logic, yet man needs proof before he can have faith. Man then has created a cycle which cannot be broken, for where proof is needed, there can be no faith.
Absolute | Belief | Faith | Logic | Man | Mind | Prison | Purity | Soul | Spirit | Thought | Thought |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Religious doctrine were determined not by the logic of a few but by the needs of the many; they were a frame of belief within which the common man, inclined by nature to a hundred unsocial actions, could be formed in to a being sufficiently disciplined and self-controlled to make society and civilization possible.
Belief | Civilization | Doctrine | Logic | Man | Nature | Self | Society | Society |
Man is like an island, a circle within circles. Man is separated from these outer circles by his mind, his beliefs, and the limitations put upon him by a life away from the Earth. The circle of man, the island of self, is the place of logic, the ‘I,’ the ego, and the physical self. That is the island that man has chosen to live within today, and in doing so he has created a prison for himself. The walls of the island prison are thick, made up of doubts, logic and lack of belief. His isolation from his greater circles of self is suffocating and prevents him from seeing life clearly and purely. It is a world of ignorance where the flesh is the only reality, the only god... Beyond man’s island of ego, his prison, lies the world of the spirit-that-moves-in-all-things, the force that is found in all things. It is a world that communicates to all entities of Creation and touches the creator. It is a circle of life that houses all man’s instinct, his deepest memory, his power to control his body and mind, and a bridge that helps man transcend flesh. It is a world that expands man’s universe and helps him to fuse himself to the earth. Most of all, it is a world that brings man to his higher self and to spiritual rapture.
Belief | Body | Control | Earth | Ego | Force | God | Ignorance | Instinct | Isolation | Life | Life | Logic | Man | Memory | Mind | Power | Prison | Reality | Self | Spirit | Universe | World |
W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches them tolerance.
It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
The higher order of logic and understanding that is capable of meaningfully reflecting the soul comes from the heart.
Logic | Order | Soul | Understanding |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
The sense of humor is the oil of life's engine. Without it, the machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh.