This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses.
Harmony | Philosophy | Reason |
Harold Nicolson, fully Sir Harold George Nicolson
The public is bored by foreign affairs until a crisis arises; and then it is guided by; feelings rather than by thoughts.
Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
Hidden harmony is mightier than what is revealed.
Harmony |
Thinking cannot be clear till it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in a half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flower. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development. Thought is the blossom; language the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.
Action | Feelings | Language | Thinking | Thought | Will | Thought |
Men are not rational beings, as commonly supposed. A man is a bundle of instincts, feelings, sentiments, which severally seek their gratification and those which are in power get hold of the reason and use it to their own ends, and exclude all other sentiments and feelings of power.
Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings and not by the intellect.
Virtue... in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man.
Apathy | Duty | Feelings | Freedom | Government | Man | Play | Precept | Reason | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Government |
Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world, in whose whole existence everything goes according to wish and will. It thus rests on the harmony of nature with his entire end and with the essential determining ground of his will.
The earth is bathed in music... The drive towards 'synchonicity' and harmony is elemental and universal so it becomes comprehensible that the 'hidden' harmony within ourselves provides us with the strength to find the 'hidden' harmony in the cosmos and universe. The more 'chaotic' and 'atonal' the cluster, the more quickly the harmony develops. Disharmony is a springboard fostering the harmony within ourselves.
I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, in living in harmony with His will.
Fulfillment | God | Harmony | Individual | Will | Wise |
To be still searching what we know not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal and proportional), this is a golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a Church; not the forced and outward union of cold and neutral, and inwardly divided minds.
Body | Church | Golden Rule | Harmony | Rule | Theology | Truth | Golden Rule |
Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order in their temper and conduct whose passions are regulated.
Appearance | Beauty | Conduct | Harmony | Love | Meekness | Order | Right | Sound | Temper | Beauty |
All violent feelings produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the "Pathetic Fallacy."
Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters... The mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have not nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.
Choice | Circumstances | Conduct | Conformity | Eccentricity | Feelings | Growth | Mind | Nature | Peculiarity | People | Pleasure | Taste | Thought | Wishes | Following | Thought |
Any adequate philosophy of life must be based on the harmony of our given instincts.
Harmony | Life | Life | Philosophy |
Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments: even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression.
Appearance | Despair | Difficulty | Harmony | Individual | Life | Life | Music | Play | Wonder |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Scurrility has no object in view but incivility; if it is uttered from feelings of petulance, it is mere abuse; if it is spoken in a joking manner, it may be considered raillery.
Abuse | Feelings | Incivility | Object |