This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
For psychological purposes the most important differences in conation are those in virtue of which the object is revealed as sensed or perceived or imaged or remembered or thought.
Self |
S. L. A. Marshall, Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall
The Japanese were masters at using classical conditioning with their soldiers. Early in World War II, Chinese prisoners were placed in a ditch on their knees with their hands bound behind them. And one by one, a select few Japanese soldiers would go into the ditch and bayonet "their" prisoner to death. This is a horrific way to kill another human being. Up on the bank, countless other young soldiers would cheer them on in their violence. Comparatively few soldiers actually killed in these situations, but by making the others watch and cheer, the Japanese were able to use these kinds of atrocities to classically condition a very large audience to associate pleasure with human death and suffering. Immediately afterwards, the soldiers who had been spectators were treated to sake, the best meal they had had in months, and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.
Art | Authority | Evil | Law | Little | Man | Reality | Art |
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
A crown of goodness (cf. Ps. 65:11) is a pure faith, adorned with eloquent doctrine, and with spiritual principles and intellections, as if with precious stones, and set as it were on the head of the devout intellect. Or rather, a crown of goodness is the Logos of God Himself, who encircles the intellect as if it were a head, protecting it with manifold forms of providence and judgment - that is, with mastery of the passions that lie within our control and with patient endurance of those we suffer against our will; and who makes this same intellect more beautiful by enabling it to participate in the grace of deification.
Man's ultimate happiness lies not in this life.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
Man |
Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes.
Beauty | Fame | Superiority | Wealth | Beauty |
’Tis a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed; that demands as a reward for a defense of our property a surrender of those inestimable privileges, to the arbitrary will of vindictive tyrants, which alone give value to that very property.
Better | Fulfillment | Heart | Land | Longing | Mourn | Nations | Order | Sin | Work | Torah |
Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL
Our passionate and ignorant activities cause great suffering, illusion and fear for us and others; therefore they should be given up. One should become firmly situated in the mode of goodness and live peacefully on the spiritual platform. The essence of goodness is to renounce selfish interest in all one’s activities and thus dedicate one’s entire being to the Supreme Being, Lord Krsna, who is the source of our existence.
People |
Woman is the heart of humanity ... its grace, ornament, and solace.
Individual | Men | Understanding | Old |
The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.
Experience | Hope | Individual | Knowledge | Property | Wisdom |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
O Lord: my heart is made bitter by its own desolation; sweeten it by Your consolation. I beseech You, 0 Lord, that having begun in hunger to seek You, I may not finish without partaking of You. I set out famished; let me not return still unfed.
Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola
He who carries God in his heart bears heaven with him wherever he goes.
Independent derivation meshed beautifully with the triumph, from the 1930's on, of a strict version of Darwinism based on the near ubiquity of adaptive design built by natural selection... Arthropods and vertebrates do share several features of functional design. But those similarities only reflect the power of natural selection to craft optimal structures independently in a world of limited biomechanical solutions to common functional problems - an evolutionary phenomenon called convergence.
Ability | Intelligence | Invention | Literature | Little | Nature | Receive | Story | World |
But, as we consider the totality of similarly broad and fundamental aspects of life, we cannot defend division by two as a natural principle of objective order. Indeed, the stuff of the universe often strikes our senses as complex and shaded continua, admittedly with faster and slower moments, and bigger and smaller steps, along the way. Nature does not dictate dualities, trinities, quarterings, or any objective basis for human taxonomies; most of our chosen schemes, and our designated numbers of categories, record human choices from a cornucopia of possibilities offered by natural variation from place to place, and permitted by the flexibility of our mental capacities. How many seasons (if we wish to divide by seasons at all) does a year contain? How many stages shall we recognize in a human life?
Altruism | Extreme | Nature | Speculation |