This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Life in this world is a very important reality, but it is not the ultimate reality... True growth in this world always calls for a dying to my own sinfulness, individualism and selfishness so that I might come closer to my true self in relationship to all others and to God. Thus, in the end, life and death are not diametrically opposed. Life involves a dying and dying is a way of life.
Character | Death | God | Growth | Important | Life | Life | Reality | Relationship | Self | Selfishness | World |
Happiness is fundamental in morals only because happiness is not something to be sought for, but is something now attained, even in the midst of pain and trouble, whenever recognition of our ties with nature and with fellow-men releases and informs our action.
Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.
Aims | Candor | Character | Confidence | Ends | Fear | Freedom | Life | Life | Men | Security | Self | Society | Society |
Suffering has the ability to weaken one’s desires. It can separate a person from cleaving to material matters. When one is in the midst of suffering, he can see it is possible for him to live without gratifying his desires, and without honor and approval. Little by little, he becomes free from those things he was previously bound to. His suffering can help him open his eyes to see his true self and internal wealth.
Ability | Character | Honor | Little | Self | Suffering | Wealth |
What our deepest self craves is not mere enjoyment, but some supreme purpose that will enlist all our powers and will give unity and direction to our life. We can never know the profoundest joy without a conviction that our life is significant - not a meaningless episode. The loftiest aim of human life is the ethical perfecting of mankind - the transfiguration of humanity.
Character | Enjoyment | Humanity | Joy | Life | Life | Mankind | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Unity | Will |
For... what liberty is; there can no other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he useth in his mind, that is, what he himself meaneth when he saith an action... is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied... that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they heard, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient, because experience and matter of fact are not verified by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory.
Absence | Action | Argument | Character | Custom | Experience | Liberty | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Reflection | Sense | Will | Words | Think |
Hugo von Hofmannstahal, fully Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal
Where is the Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced.
Good will, solidarity and wretchedness, and the struggle for a better world have now thrown off their religious garb. The attitude of today’s martyrs is no longer patience but action; their goal is no longer their own immortality in the after-life but the happiness of men who come after them for whom they know how to die.
Action | Better | Character | Good | Immortality | Life | Life | Martyrs | Men | Patience | Struggle | Will | World | Happiness |
Immortality is participation in the eternal now of the divine Ground: survival is persistence in one of the forms of time. Immortality is the result of total deliverance.
Character | Eternal | Immortality | Persistence | Survival | Time |
A man’s Self is the sum-total of all that he can call his, not only his body, and his psychic powers, but this clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his land and horse and yacht and bank account.
Body | Character | Children | Land | Man | Reputation | Self | Wife |