This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John E. Large, fully John Ellis Large
Social security depends on personal security. And personal security depends on spiritual security. Spiritual security is primary, in the sense that every other kind of security stems from it. Without spiritual security, there just can’t be any other kind of lasting security.
It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.
The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.
Belief | Character | Error | Justify | Liberty | Life | Life | Man | Order | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |
Affectation in any part of our carriage is lighting up a candle to see our defects, and never fails to make us taken notice of, either as wanting sense or sincerity.
Affectation | Character | Defects | Sense | Sincerity |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
When I want to judge someone, I ask him how satisfied he is with himself, to what extent he is pleased with his words or his work.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The spirit of politeness is a desire to bring about by our words and manners, that others may be pleased with us and with themselves.
Character | Desire | Manners | Spirit | Words | Politeness |
The greatest danger that faces this country is the danger of moral lassitude - liberty turned to license, rights demanded and duties shirked, the moral sense deteriorating, the traditions and standards of the nation weakened, the spiritual forces within it losing ground.
The contemplative life has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart... you will truly recover the light and capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanation because it is too close to be explained.
Capacity | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Silence | Solitude | Will | Words | Understand |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Love hates people to be attached to each other except by himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set up and maintained under another title, as marriage is. Connections and means have, with reason, as much weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry must as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us. Therefore I like this fashion of arranging it rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense of other rather than by our own. How opposite is all this to the conventions of love!
Beauty | Character | Family | Love | Marriage | Means | People | Posterity | Practice | Race | Reason | Sense | Title |
Jianzhi Sengcan, Third Patriarch of Zen, Third Patriarch of Ch'an
The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love does it reveal itself fully and without disguise. A tenth of an inch’s difference, and heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see it before your own eyes have no fixed thoughts either for or against it. To set up what you like against what you dislike - this is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood. Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose... Pursue not the outer entanglements, dwell not in the inner void; be serene in the oneness of things, and dualism vanishes of itself... Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us appear to be real because of Ignorance. Do not strive to seek after the True, only cease to cherish opinions... One in all, All in One - if only this is realized, no more worry about not being perfect. When the mind and each believing mind and Mind, this is where words fail, for it is not of the past, present or future.
Character | Disease | Disguise | Earth | Future | Hate | Heaven | Ignorance | Love | Meaning | Mind | Oneness | Past | Peace | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Words | World | Worry |
Barthold Niebuhr, fully Barthold Georg Neibuhr
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
Character | Faith | Good | History | Hope | Love | Nothing | Sense | Worth |
It would truly be a fine thing if men suffered themselves to be guided by reason, that they should acquiesce in the true remonstrances addressed to them by the writings of the learned and the advice of friends. But the greater part are so disposed that the words which enter by one ear do incontinently go out of the other, and begin again by following the custom. The best teacher one can have is necessity.
Advice | Character | Men | Necessity | Words | Following | Teacher |
Memory, in point of fact, is impeded by the body: even as things are, addition often brings forgetfulness; with thinning and clearing away, memory will often revive. The soul is stability; the shifting and fleeting thing which body is can be a cause only of its forgetting not of its remembering - Lethe stream may be understood in this sense - and memory is a fact of the soul.
Body | Cause | Character | Forgetfulness | Memory | Sense | Soul | Will |