This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
If the writer of these lines has succeeded in providing some material for clarifying these problems, he may regard his labors as not having been fruitless.
Consciousness | Nature | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
Awakening | Consciousness | Memory | Perception |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.
Betrayal | Consciousness | Familiarity | Force | Fraternity | Life | Life | Order | People | Torture | Parting |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles.
Consciousness | Poetry | Position | Regard | Universe |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death we're a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then not in dreams but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and it's castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
Consciousness | Habit | Love | Space | Thinking |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless. What on earth can Dorothy Hummerson care for Greece and the Orient with their harems and slaves?
Consciousness | Knowing |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Men appear to prefer to ruin one another's fortunes, and to cut each other's throats over a few miserable villages, than to extend the means of human happiness
Awareness | Consciousness | Eternal | Knowing | Awareness |
A spontaneous cessation of mental activity releases an absolutely new and dynamic energy. Silence increases the sensitivity of the total being. It refreshes the nervous system in an astounding way. As you come out totally replenished when you have had profound and innocent sleep, So do you come out totally renewed when you have had ceased to function through the ego in the hour of silence.
Beginning | Challenge | Consciousness | Effort | Global | Isolation | Luxury | Mind | Question | Self-righteousness | Understanding | Wholeness | Will | Crisis |
There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual.
Acceptance | Action | Consciousness | Cynicism | History | Indifference | Integration | Majority | People | Service | Society | Spirituality | Work | Society |
In a time when the survival of the human race is in question, to continue with the status quo is to cooperate with insanity, to contribute to chaos. When darkness engulfs the spirit of the people, it is urgent for concerned people to awaken, to rise to revolution.
Consciousness | Failure | Need | Will | Failure |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Oh may the flood last forever. A virgin lip: no bungalows; as it was in the beginning. Now it’s lead grey with the red leaves in front. Our inland sea.
Better | Books | Consciousness | Future | Old |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Life is what you see in people's eyes, life is what they learn and learning, never ceases to be aware that, although she tries to hide - what?
Beginning | Consciousness | Life | Life | Little |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
One false idea is that anyone can hurt you. Events can ruin your reputation, take your money, mistreat you, revenge itself upon you, deceive, betray, abandon you, but cannot hurt you.
Renouncement of evils and sins helps in the attainment of prosperity and success.
Consciousness | Focus | Pride |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.
Consciousness | Father | Freedom | Justify | Nothing | Solitude | Child |
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
The Self is within all, and it is without all. – Isha Upanishad
Body | Consciousness | Day | Heaven | Light | Mortal | Self | World |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our Being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed, whether it be ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization, will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of accumulated nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean that we have definitively won. We are in fact far from definite victory.
Consciousness | Global | Revolution | Society | Will | Society |
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.