This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation... A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
Good | Happy | Hell | Leisure | Occupation |
Leisure, though the propertied classes give its name to their own idleness, is not idleness. It is not even a luxury: it is a necessity, and a necessity of the first importance. Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done at leisure, and never paid for in cash or kind. Leisure any be described as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes: labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.
Choice | Idleness | Labor | Leisure | Luxury | Men | Nature | Necessity | Work | World |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Absolute is Mind (Spirit) - this is the supreme definition of the Absolute. To find this definition and to grasp its meaning and burden was, we may say, the ultimate purpose of all education and all philosophy: it was the point to which turned the impulse of all religion and science; and it is this impulse that must explain the history of the world... It remains for philosophy in its own element of intelligible unity to get hold of what was thus given as a mental image, and what implicitly is the ultimate reality.
Absolute | Education | History | Impulse | Meaning | Mind | Philosophy | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Religion | Science | Spirit | Unity | World |
Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure for freedom than unconventionality does.
Freedom | Leisure | People | Reason | Society | Thought | Time | Society | Trouble | Thought |
Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul.
Earnestness | Prayer | Soul | Speech |
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
A good definition of an equitable settlement is one that will make both sides unhappy.
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
The spirit of policy and that of bureaucracy are diametrically opposed… The essence of bureaucracy is its quest for safety; its success is calculability. Profound policy thrives on perpetual creation, on a constant redefinition of goals. Good administration thrives on routine, the definition of relationships which can survive mediocrity. Policy involves an adjustment of risks; administration, an avoidance of deviation.
Administration | Deviation | Goals | Good | Mediocrity | Policy | Spirit | Success |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
What is leisure but opportunity for more complete and entire action?
Action | Leisure | Opportunity |
Things infinite and divine… are given not so much for definition as for trust; are less the objects we think of than the very tone and color of our thought, the tension of our love, the unappeasable thirst of grief and reverence.
All arts acknowledge that then only we know certainly, when we can define; for definition is that which refines the pure essence of things from the circumstance.
The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."
Appearance | Eternity | Experience | Forgiveness | God | Justice | Love | Mind | Mortal | Mystical | Reason | Relationship | Speech | Thought | Time | Unity | Virtue | Virtue | World | Forgiveness | Thought |
The Problem - Myth might be defined simply as "other people's religion," to which an equivalent definition of religion would be "misunderstood mythology"... Like dreams, myths are productions of the human imagination. Their images, consequently, though derived from the material world and its supposed history, are, like dreams, revelations of the deepest hopes, desires and fears, potentialities and conflicts of the human will... Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.
Dreams | History | Imagination | Myth | People | Religion | Will | World |
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have.
Leisure |
Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
Laughter is by definition healthy.
Laughter |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of Universal History, that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History.
Abstract | Appreciation | Consciousness | Energy | Knowledge | Nature | Self | Spirit | Taste | Appreciation |
George S. Patton, fully George Smith Patton, Jr.
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality when one knows not fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on. Discipline, pride, self-respect, self-confidence, and the love of glory are attributes which will make a man courageous even when he is afraid.
George S. Patton, fully George Smith Patton, Jr.
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on. Discipline, pride, self-respect, self-confidence, and the love of glory are attributes which will make a man courageous even when he is afraid.