This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The acceptance of the risk of death and the acceptance of death are very different... The acceptance of the risk of death is the acceptance of life; and love of danger is love of life... The acceptance of risk is a gift you make yourself.
Acceptance | Danger | Death | Life | Life | Love | Risk | Danger |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The aim, and test, of progress under a truly Christian dispensation on Earth would not lie in the field of mundane social life; the field would be the spiritual life of individual souls in their passage through this earthly life from birth into this world to death out of it.
Birth | Death | Earth | Individual | Life | Life | Progress | World |
Thou art/ - I am? - why argue? - Being is. Keep still and be. Death will not still the mind. Nor argument, nor hopes of after-death. This world the battle-ground, yourself the foe yourself must master. Eager the mind to seek. Yet oft astray, causing its own distress then crying for relief, as though some God barred from it jealously the Bliss it sought but would not face. Till in the end, all battles fought, all earthly loves abjured, dawn in the East, there is no other way but to be still. In stillness then to find the giants all were windmills, all the strife self-made, unreal; even he that strove a fancied being, as when that good knight woke from delirium and with a loud cry rendered his soul to God. Mind, then, or soul? Break free from subtle words. Only be still, lay down the mid, submit, and Being then is Bliss, Bliss Consciousness: and That you are.
Argument | Art | Battle | Consciousness | Dawn | Death | Distress | God | Good | Mind | Self | Soul | Will | Words | World | God |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
It is said to have been reported to one of the Roman emperors, as a piece of good news, that one of his subjects had invented a process for manufacturing unbreakable glass. The emperor gave orders that the inventor should be put to death and the records of his invention should be destroyed. If the invention had been put on the market, the manufacturers of regular glass would have been put out of business; there would have been unemployment that would have caused political unrest, and perhaps revolution.
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
Of all “evils” death is the most feared although it is the fate of all creatures. It is so natural that reason tells us it must be good. Death is not lifelessness, but life in motion. Our essential being cannot die because it was never born. Only its representations appear and disappear in the chronological sequences we call incarnations. If death is the prelude to life in other forms it ceases to be “evil” but becomes the means for releasing consciousness is that it may express itself in other and more diverse fields.
Consciousness | Death | Evil | Fate | Good | Life | Life | Means | Reason | Fate |
Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy... Indeed, without death man would scarcely philosophize.
Death | Genius | Man | Philosophy |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
From childhood upwards, everything is done to make the minds of men and women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of prison or a traitor’s death in time of war.
Childhood | Contempt | Death | Imagination | Men | Peace | Prison | Time | Traitor | War |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
Your sorrow is for nothing. The truly wise mourn neither for the living nor for the dead. There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be... That Reality which pervades the universe is indestructible. No one has power to change the Changeless... Death is certain for the born. Rebirth is certain for the dead. You should not grieve for what is unavoidable.
Change | Death | Future | Mourn | Nothing | Power | Reality | Sorrow | Time | Universe | Wise |
For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its nature; and that thus all our actions and thoughts must take such different directions, according to the state of that eternity, that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that pint which ought to be our ultimate end.
Death | Eternal | Eternity | Judgment | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | Truth |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
For that which is born death is certain, and for the dead birth is certain. Therefore grieve not over that which is unavoidable.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
Never the spirit born; the spirit shall cease to be never; never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams! Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever; Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the laborers of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Death | Devotion | Dispute | Genius | Grave | Growth | Hope | Individual | Inspiration | Man | Philosophy | System | Thought | Universe | Thought |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
For that which is born, death is certain; and for the dead, birth is certain. Therefore, grieve not over that which is unavoidable.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.
Achievement | Death | Devotion | Genius | Inspiration | Man | System | Universe |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
For certain is death for the born and certain is birth for the dead; therefore over the inevitable thou shouldst not grieve.
Birth | Death | Inevitable |
The living all find death unpleasant; men mourn over it. And yet, what is death, but the unbending of the bow and its return to its case?