This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."
Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper
Memory may be but a power of coming to the treasury of Fact, A momentary self-desertion, an absence in spirit from the now, An actual coursing hither and thither, by the mind, slipped from its leash, A life, as in the mystery of dreams, spent within the limits of a moment.
Martin Esslin, fully Martin Julius Esslin
The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it. But the challenge behind this message is anything but one of despair. It is a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly; precisely because there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world. The shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation.
Absurd | Aims | Challenge | Despair | Freedom | Laughter | Man | Mystery | Sense | Tears |
That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. But this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals the mystery to me. He that forgets all being caused as he decides from the depths, he that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance--this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of his freedom. It is not his limit but his completion; freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate--with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light--looks like grace itself.
Mans threefold living relation is: 1. His relation to the world and to things; 2. His relation to men both individuals and to the many; 3. His relationship to the mystery of being which is dimly apparent through all this but infinitely transcends it which the philosopher calls the absolute and the believer calls God, and which cannot in fact be eliminated from the situation even by a man who rejects both designations.
Maurice Chevalier, fully Maurice Auguste Chevalier
Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.
Inspiration | Intelligence | Mystery | Need | Nothing | People |
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.
Only exaggeration is true. The essential character of prehistory is the appearance of utmost horror in the individual detail. A statistical compilation of those slaughtered in a progrom, which also includes mercy killings, conceals its essence, which emerges only in an exact description of the exception, the most hideous torture. A happy life in a world of horror is in-ominously refuted by the mere existence of that word. The latter therefore becomes essential, the former negligible.
Appearance | Character | Exaggeration | Existence | Happy | Individual | Life | Life | Mercy | World |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
In the garden the door is always open into the "holy" - growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle, and in the garden we are never far away from death, the fertilizing, good, creative death.
Mystery |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles, wills through His Infinite Mercy to effect His presence amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the human form, but His physical presence amidst mankind not being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of the world. When He asserts, however, His Divinity on earth by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the Age, He is worshipped by some who accept Him as God; and glorified by a few who know him as God on Earth. But it invariably falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him, while He is physically in their midst. Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation in the form of Avatar should, however, indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.
Age | Divinity | Earth | Eternal | Existence | God | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Mercy | Order | Rest | Wills | God |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
The Infinite alone exists and is Real; the finite is passing and false. The Original Whim in the Beyond caused the apparent descent of the Infinite into the realm of the seeming finite. This is the Divine Mystery and Divine Game in which Infinite Consciousness for ever plays on all levels of finite consciousness.
Consciousness | Mystery |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Age after age, history repeats itself when men and women, in their ignorance, limitations and pride, sit in judgment over the God-incarnated man who declares his Godhood, and condemn him for uttering the Truths they cannot understand. He is indifferent to abuse and persecution for, in his true compassion he understands, in his continual experience of Reality he knows, and in his infinite mercy he forgives.
Abuse | Compassion | Experience | History | Judgment | Man | Men | Mercy | Reality | Truths |
For all its [Judaism's] heavy intellectualism it set morality above logic, the pursuit of justice and mercy over the possession of the correct idea.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
Those who are merciful have mercy shown them by the Compassionate One, if you show mercy to those who are in the earth, He Who is in heaven will show mercy to you.
Moses de León, known in Hebrew as Moshe ben Shem-Tov NULL
Behold, I shall reveal to you a very deep mystery of sublime greatness. Man who is in this world is here only by the association of the three elements which are one. They are: the rational soul, the Vital soul and the sensitive soul. It is only by union of these three forces that man is made perfect. It is thanks to this mysterious unity manifested in him that he becomes the reflection of that which is above, that is: the real image of God.
Association | Man | Mystery | Reflection | Soul | Unity | World | Association |
Allah will not give mercy to anyone, except those who give mercy to other creatures.
A Muslim has five duties towards another Muslim; to return a salutation, visit the sick, follow funerals, accept an invitation and say 'God have mercy on you' when one sneezes.
Mercy |