This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.
We must discover how life in a non-growing economy can actually be fulfilling, interesting, and secure. The absence of growth does not necessarily imply a lack of change or improvement. Within a non-growing or equilibrium economy there can still be continuous development of practical skills, artistic expression, and certain kinds of technology. In fact, some historians and social scientists argue that life in an equilibrium economy can be superior to life in a fast-growing economy:
Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.
Absence | Affectation |
Persons are judged to be great because of the positive qualities they possess, not because of the absence of faults
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.
The accumulation of evil never resides in one person at the top because no one gets to the top without representing the interests of the dominant factions in the system. The evil, if it is evil at all, lives in the routine ways in which people throughout the system collude in maintaining a dysfunctional status quo.
Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.
Absence | Ambition | Desire | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | Will | Ambition | Happiness |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
In the eternal nothing passeth but the whole is present; whereas no time is all at once present.
Absence |
Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but in Milan I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Enter into the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed again to enter the Church, be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent.
Absence | Absurd | Age | Business | Children | Deeds | Father | Folly | Man | Need | Reading | Reason | Rhetoric | Study | Will | World | Deeds | Business | Afraid | Blessed | Child |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
One can compare creation to a word, which man utters with his mouth. In man’s expression of the word, its form and meaning are registered upon the hearing of the listener and in his mind. Along the same lines it is said that the exalted and holy creator expresses his word, and its meaning is registered in the substantiality of matter, and matter preserves that meaning, in other words, that created form is imprinted in matter and registered upon it.
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
Absence | Consideration | Manners | Will |
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
He who constantly rules the world is verily the cause of bondage and Liberation. Established in His own glory, He is the Immortal, the Embodiment of Consciousness, the omnipresent Protector of the universe. There is no one else able to rule it.
The profound mystery in the Vedanta was taught in the previous cycle. It should not be given to one whose passions have not been subdued, nor to one who is not a son or a disciple.
Absence | Perfection |
The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.
Absence | Evil | Extreme | Fear | Hunger | Initiative | Need | Public | Risk | Security | Soul |
Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
[And, most clearly, this Spirit is the one] from whom alone good fortune is to be hoped for, to whom alone flight from adversity is to be taken, and of whom alone supplication is to be made for anything whatsoever. Truly, then, this Spirit not only is God but is the only God—ineffably three and one.