This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
The appearance of things changes according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
Appearance | Beauty | Emotions | Magic | Beauty |
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life... Variation, experiment and insurgence are all of them attributes of freedom.
Beauty | Contemplation | Day | Experiment | Freedom | Life | Life | Mystery | Perfection | Poverty | Search | Sound | Truth | Contemplation |
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 |
Acquire good physique and mental robustness which comes from fresh air, sound and plain food, constant and compelling attention to waste matter, proper and peaceful sleep, and concentration on true religion, ethics, art and literature.
Art | Attention | Ethics | Good | Literature | Religion | Sound | Waste | Art |
The purpose of the spirit in the heart is concealed, and by outer appearance cannot be judged.
Appearance | Heart | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit |
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a man-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. This is akin to myth making... The boldness can be gauged by the distance between the world of appearance and the conjectured reality, the explanatory hypotheses.
Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction.
Appearance | Conscience | Earth | Evolution | Force | Law | Life | Life | Play | World |
The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Those who desire to be men in truth, not brutes in the appearance of men, must constantly endeavor to reduce the wants of the body.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
What is needed to make democracy work as it is not now working- to bring into existence in reality a sound conception of democracy? The mass liberal education of the mass electorate. Not just schooling, but an education that involves moral training as well as training of the mind.
Democracy | Education | Existence | Mind | Reality | Sound | Training | Work |
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret. Great passions are for great souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
Enough | Events | Life | Life | Nothing | People | Reason | Self | Sound | Think |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Pain, it is true, transmuted, so to say, by its own fiery heat into anger, loses every appearance of depression and feebleness; the angry man makes a show of energy, as the man in a high fever does of natural heat, while, in fact, all this action of soul is but mere diseased palpitation, distention, and inflammation.
Action | Anger | Appearance | Depression | Energy | Man | Pain | Soul |
Religious revelation, philosophical thought, scientific investigation all converge on the problem of time and all come to the same view of it - time does not exist. there is no perpetual and eternal appearance and disappearance of phenomena. Everything exists always. There is only one eternal present. The world is world of infinite possibilities. Our mind follows the development of possibilities always in one direction only. But in fact every moment contains a very large number of possibilities, and all of them are actualised.
Appearance | Eternal | Mind | Phenomena | Present | Revelation | Thought | Time | World |
Time does not exist! There exist no perpetual and eternal appearance and disappearance of phenomena, no ceaselessly flowing fountain of ever-appearing and ever-vanishing events. Everything exists always! There is only one eternal present, the Eternal Now, which the weak and limited human mind can never grasp and conceive. But the idea of the Eternal Now is not at all the idea of a cold and merciless predetermnation of everything, of an exact and infallible pre-existence.
Appearance | Eternal | Events | Existence | Mind | Phenomena | Present | Time |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes m ore conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.
Appearance | Fortune | Good | Greatness | Spirit | Will | World |
Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie - for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance - will instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the truth and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance.
Alms | Appearance | Character | Example | Good | Impression | Murder | Nature | Truth | Will | Murder |
The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.
Absence | Appearance | Life | Life | Practice | Reconciliation |
The less government we have the better - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.
Abuse | Appearance | Better | Character | Government | Growth | Imitation | Individual | Influence | Man | Power | Wise | Government |