This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
The Zen ways and arts draw a bridge from real artistic creation in painting, architecture, poetry) to artistic skills like flower arrangement and gardening, and ultimately to all of everyday life. The religious is found in the everyday, the sacred in the profane; indeed the everyday is religious, the profane is sacred.
Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men, shall we be able to speak of mankind as civilized.
We have in America the largest public school system on earth, the most expensive college buildings, the most extensive curriculum, but nowhere else is education so blind to its objectives, so indifferent to any specific outcome as in America. One trouble has been at the repression of faults rather than creation of virtues.
Earth | Education | Objectives | Public | System | Wisdom | Trouble |
Friedrich Fröbel, fully Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel
Play is the highest level of child development. It is the spontaneous expression of thought and feeling. It is the purest creation of the child's mind as it is also a pattern and copy of the natural life hidden in man and in all things.
Life | Life | Man | Mind | Play | Thought | Wisdom | Child | Thought |
He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
Absurd | Good | Influence | Insult | Mankind | Nothing | Pleasure | Wisdom | Wishes | Insult |
Let us distinguish between the creation of wealth for the community and the extortion of wealth from the community.
Distinguish | Wealth | Wisdom |
Crawford Greenewalt, fully Crawford Hallock Greenewalt
Behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the mind of some long individual. An individual whose dreams waken him in the night while others lie contentedly asleep.
Dreams | Human race | Individual | Mind | Race | Wisdom |
Religion is the answer to that cry of Reason which nothing can silence, that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet, that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply.
Aspiration | Heart | Nothing | Reason | Religion | Silence | Soul | Wisdom | Aspiration |
To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship.
The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life.
Absolute | Cause | Civilization | Destiny | Faith | Global | God | Human race | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Mankind | Meaning | Means | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Reality | Service | Society | Spirit | Time | Tradition | Truth | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words | World | Worship | Society | God |
Nature is but the echo of the soul, and images nothing therefore of the Divine creation and providence which is not primarily impressed by the soul.
Nature | Nothing | Providence | Soul | Wisdom |
Muzaffer Ozak, fully Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi
Affection is the basis for the creation of the entire universe, all beings and creatures. Everything has affection as its base and foundation. Affection is the marrow and essence of all worlds, visible or invisible known or unknown. Affection is the secret of creation.
Henri Matisse, birth name Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse
All art worthy of the name is religious. Be it a creation of lines and colors, if it is not religious, it does not exist. If it is not religious, it is only a matter of documentary art, anecdotal art, which is no longer art.
Visible creation in time, or nature... does not exist of itself. It is not the cause of itself, but is an ever-changing copy of something which lies behind appearances. The recipient, or mother, is three-dimensional space, which must be empty of all properties in order to receive the impress of the model. The copy is in time. The model (idea) is outside our space and time.
Cause | Model | Mother | Nature | Order | Receive | Space | Time | Wisdom |