This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
To will and not to do when there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it.
To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge.
Giving of yourself, learning to be tolerant, giving recognition and approval to others, remaining flexible enough to mature and learn - yields happiness, harmony, contentment and productivity. These are the qualities of a rich life, the bounteous harvest of getting along with people.
Character | Contentment | Enough | Giving | Harmony | Learning | Life | Life | People | Qualities | Approval | Learn |
Lord Acton, John Emerich Dalberg-Acton
Human learning has often been an instrument, not a source, of hostility to religion.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Wisdom is of the soul, it is not susceptible of proof, it is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; something there is in the flot of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
Character | Excellence | Immortality | Qualities | Reality | Soul | Wisdom | Excellence |
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
That learning is most requisite which unlearns evil.
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue... Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
Desire | Learning | Life | Life | Man | Salvation | Wisdom |
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
In that continuity of becoming which is reality itself, the present moment is constituted by the quasi-instantaneous section effected by our perception in the flowing mass; and this section is precisely that which we call the material world. Our bodies occupies its centre; it is, in this material world, that part of which we directly feel the flux; in its actual state the actuality of our present lies.
Perception | Present | Reality | Wisdom | World |
Children who have been taught, or conditioned, to listen passively most of the day to the warm verbal communication coming from the TV screen, to the deep emotional appeal of the so-called TV personality, are often unable to respond to real persons because they arouse so much less feeling than the skilled actor. Worse, they lose the ability to learn from reality because life experiences are more complicated than the ones they see on the screen, and there is no one who comes in at the end to explain it all. The “TV child”... gets discouraged when he cannot grasp the meaning of what happens to him.... If, later in life, this block of solid inertia is not removed, the emotional isolation from others that starts in front of TV may continue... This being seduced into passivity and discouraged about facing life actively on one’ sown is the real danger of TV.
Ability | Children | Danger | Day | Isolation | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Reality | Wisdom | Danger | Inertia | Learn |