This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible charge any prosecutor has ever uttered. to me it is the extremist thinkable form of corruption, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption conceivably possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity, it has made of every value a disvalue, of every truth a lie, of every kind of integrity a vileness of soul. People still dare to talk to me of its ‘humanitarian’ blessings! To abolish any state of distress whatever has been profoundly inexpedient to it: it has lived on states of distress, it has created states of distress in order to externalize itself.
Blessings | Church | Corruption | Distress | Integrity | Nothing | Order | People | Soul | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Value |
The value of the whole must not be assumed to be the same as the sum of the value of the parts.
There are questions whose truth or untruth cannot be decided by man; all the supreme questions, all the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason... To grasp the limits of reason - only this is true philosophy.
Man | Philosophy | Problems | Reason | Truth | Wisdom | Value |
Old age brings us to know the value of the blessings which we have enjoyed, and it brings us also to a very thankful perception of those which yet remain. Is a man advanced in life? The ease of a single day, the rest of a single night, are gifts which may be subjects of gratitude to God.
Age | Blessings | Day | God | Gratitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Perception | Rest | Wisdom | Value |
And yet we are very apt to be full of ourselves, instead of Him that made what we so much value, and but for whom we can have no reason to value ourselves. For we have nothing that we can call our own, no, not ourselves; for we are all but tenants, and at will too, of the great Lord of ourselves, and the rest of this great farm, the world that we live upon.
Lord | Nothing | Reason | Rest | Will | Wisdom | World | Value |
Peace is a value which man has always sought: Peace among the nations, peace among men, but most of all peace of mind. While man has sought peace external to himself, he may have overlooked the fact that the peace that will influence all living things will be the peace that is first discovered within himself.
Influence | Man | Men | Mind | Nations | Peace | Will | Wisdom | Value |
Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to a formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of accomplishment in living, and the depth of insight into beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.
Accomplishment | Beauty | Challenge | Insight | Laughter | Loneliness | Love | Nature | Pain | Science | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Friendship | Beauty | Value |
Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must not be the mere shell that we admire, but the thought that this shell is only the beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.
Beauty | Mind | Perfection | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Thought | Value |
Art is always the index of social vitality, the moving finger that records the destiny of a civilization. A wise statesman should keep an anxious eye on this graph, for it is more significant than a decline in exports or a fall in the value of a nation's currency.
Our material possessions, like our joys, are enhanced in value by being shared. Hoarded and unimproved property can only afford satisfaction to a miser.
Possessions | Property | Wisdom | Value |
Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you’ll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.
To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good in themselves, and capable of good use. But to overvalue riches, to give them a place in the heart, which God did not design them to fill, this is covetousness.
Design | God | Good | Heart | Riches | Wisdom | Riches | God | Value |
If all Earth history is compressed into one “day”, the sea is mixed two thousand times in every “minute” of it, distributing warmth and energy evenly round our water-cooled and air-conditioned planet. Every eighteen “seconds” on this collapsed time scale, the world’s rivers dump enough dissolved salts into the sea to double its concentration, but this nevertheless remains around a resolute and reasonable 3 per cent. It is vital that this should be so, because few living cells can survive a salinity which exceeds, even for just a few seconds, a value of 6 per cent. Half the living matter in the world is still found in the sea, and that fact alone seems to make the chemical regulation not only necessary, but possible.
Day | Earth | Energy | Enough | History | Regulation | Time | Wisdom | World | Value |