This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Philip S. Berg, originally Feivel Gruberger
Our souls are like streams that can never rest until they once again mingle with the Infinite sea... We are here to earn the beneficence of the Creator. This is a process sometimes too difficult to accomplish in one lifetime, but fortunately we are provided with as many lifetimes as necessary.
Andrei Bitov, fully Andrei Georgiyevich Bitov
Life has neither material nor idealistic secrecy or mystery about it. Life is equal to itself only, hence perceiving its meaning is out of the question... The exaggeration of our mental abilities has given rise to what we perceive as “the problem” of discerning life’s purpose... If it is beyond our powers to disembowel love and beauty - we can only ravish them - it means that they are given to us not for cognition but for reflection. Similarly, the freedom of choice granted to man, a freedom denied the rest of the living species, is man’s task, a duty to exercise and fulfill, not merely an opportune option.
Beauty | Character | Choice | Duty | Exaggeration | Freedom | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Means | Mystery | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Reflection | Rest | Secrecy | Beauty |
Jean-Pierre Camus de Pontcarré
The only perfection I know of is a hearty love of god, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Charity is the only virtue which rightly unites us to God and man. Such union is our final aim and end, and all the rest is mere delusion.
Character | Charity | Delusion | God | Love | Man | Perfection | Rest | Virtue | Virtue | God |
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 |
Madame Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe Guyon
There are three kinds of silence. Silence from words is good, because inordinate speaking tends to evil. Silence, or rest from desires and passions is still better, because it promotes quietness of spirit. But the best of all is silence from unnecessary and wandering thoughts, because that is essential to internal recollection, and because it lays a foundation for a proper reputation and for silence in other respects.
Better | Character | Evil | Good | Reputation | Rest | Silence | Spirit | Words |
Mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist - and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists - knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession. The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking feeling and fancying.
Action | Aesthetic | Character | Consciousness | Contemplation | Desire | Discovery | Emotions | Ends | Enough | Good | Imagination | Knowing | Man | Reward | Science | Thinking | Will | Discovery |
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
Beginning | Character | Ends | Evil | Fanaticism | Fear | Religion | Wickedness |