This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O, these deliberate fools, when they do choose, they have the wisdom by their wit to lose.
It has become a conviction with me that psychology may in the long run do much to change the conception of the fundamental nature of the religious life, which, on the whole, is now too generally made a matter of doctrine. It is too intellectual At the doors of most churches one is met by required beliefs in a particular conception of God, in a speculative theory about the divinity of Christ, definite ideas concerning sin and salvation, the efficacy of ordinances, and the claims of supernatural revelation. What people are really seeking is access to refreshing fountains of life, sources of strength and guidance. They crave association with people and institutions which may convey to them a sense of what is most worthwhile in life and what may furnish impulsion toward real and enduring values. They know pretty well what those values are when allowed to let their own deepest desires express themselves.
Beginning | Divinity | Excitement | History | Meaning | Metaphysics | Philosophy | Revelation | Science | Temper | Theology | Thought | Work | Thought |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed.
Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly MahÄyÄna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly HÄ«nayÄna. These are temples where only the HÄ«nayÄna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the MahÄyÄna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [HÄ«nayÄna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna] practices are carried out.
Man | Object | People | Thought | Time | Waiting | Wrong | Child | Thought |
Of all the know-nothing persons in this world, commend us to the man who has "never known a day's illness." He is a moral dunce, one who has lost the greatest lesson of life; who has skipped the finest lecture in that great school of humanity, the sick-chamber.
It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Enough | Genius | Men | Nations | Thought | Govern | Thought |
The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development.
Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL
Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.
A person with a bad name is already half hanged, saith the old proverb.
God, in His wrath, has not left this world to the mercy of the subtlest dialectician; and all arguments are happily transitory in their effect when they contradict the primal intuitions of conscience and the inborn sentiments of the heart.
Eldridge Cleaver, fully Leroy Eldridge Cleaver
And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Education is not so important as people think.
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.
Achievement | Beauty | Conduct | Good | Harmony | Important | Thought | Beauty | Old | Thought |