This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
Desire | Destroy | Knowledge | Man | Mind | Passion | Perfection | Rule | Study | Taste | Tranquility | Think |
Marva Collins, born Marva Delores Nettles
The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.
Learning |
The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.
In many ways, constancy is an illusion. After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time. Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them. Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.
AN INSPIRED LIFE: I HAVE A CHOICE. My key to living an inspired life involves Embracing my history, Understanding the function of expectations and gently learning to have none; Recognizing the power of attentive and conscious choices. In all circumstances I acknowledge this, IN ALL THINGS AND ALL WAYS, I HAVE CHOICE. My choice resides in my perspective. While I certainly do not control climate and markets and roadways and others, I do control myself and my response to all those circumstances. I do indeed.
Choice | Circumstances | Control | Learning | Life | Life | Power |
Marva Collins, born Marva Delores Nettles
I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.
Learning |
Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.
Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.
Individual | Success | Taste | Tomorrow | Will |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
When I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning a new language, or a new art or craft (gardening?) that implies a new way of looking at the universe. Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to "take in" the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work.
Age | Art | Imagination | Important | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Relationship | Restraint | Art | Understand |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The soul has two eyes: an inner and an outer eye. The inner eye of the soul is the one which perceives being and receives its own being directly from God: This is the activity which is particular to itself. The outer eye of the soul is that which is directed towards all creatures and which perceives them in the manner of an image and the function of a faculty. But they who are turned within themselves so that they know God according to their own taste and in their own being, are freed from all created thingss and are secure in themselves in a very fortress of truth.
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
Human-heartedness is man's mind. Righteousness is man's path. How sad that he abandons that path and does not rely on it; that he loses that mind and does not know to seek it. When a man has lost a cock or a dog, he knows to seek it, but having lost his (proper) mind, he does not know to seek it. The Way of Learning is nothing other than seeking the lost mind.
Learning | Man | Mind | Nothing | Righteousness |
The lesson I was learning involved the idea that I could feel compassion for people without acting on it.
Compassion | Learning | Lesson | People |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Before he can know Who he is, man has to unlearn the mass of illusory knowledge hehas burdened himself with on the interminable journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. It is only through love that you can begin to unlearn, and, eventually, put an end to all that you do not know. God-love penetrates all illusion, while no amount of illusion can dim God-love. Start by learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the less you remember yourself; and when you completely forget yourself, you find me as the Source of all Love.
Beginning | God | Illusion | Journey | Kindness | Knowledge | Learning | Love | Man | Unconsciousness | Will | God |
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
Whoever possesses God in their being has Him in a divine manner, and He shines out to them in all things; for them all things taste of God and in all things it is God's image that they see.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding.