This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The task of theology is to show how the world is founded on something beyond transient fact, and how it issues in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal world is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of theology to express that element in perishing lives which is undying by reason of its expression of perfection proper to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow.
Accomplishment | Joy | Life | Life | Perfection | Reason | Sorrow | Theology | World | Understand |
The truth is that you learn the lore of love only when your love is out of reach; and the lore of the blue landscape seen from your mountain-top only when you are struggling up a rock wall on your long ascent; and you learn of God only in the exercise of prayer that remains unanswered. For the one satisfaction that time cannot wither, the one joy that never knows regret, is that which is granted you when your course is run and in the fullness of time it is given you to be, having finished with becoming.
God | Joy | Love | Prayer | Regret | Time | Truth | God | Learn |
To know how to refuse is as important as to know how to consent. A gilded No gives more satisfaction than a dry Yes.
A man who finds no satisfaction I himself seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
Man |
One wonders whether a generation that demands satisfaction of all its needs and instant solutions of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive - it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater our desire to be like others.
Desire |
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
Prayer is more the mere outburst of the desires or sorrows of the soul, seeking that satisfaction or consolation which it does not find within itself. It is the expression of a faith, instinctive or reflective, obscure or clear, wavering or steadfast, in the existence, the presence, the power and the sympathy of the Being to whom prayer is addressed.
Consolation | Existence | Faith | Power | Prayer | Soul | Sympathy | Wavering |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Passions, private aims, and the satisfaction of selfish desires, are… most effective springs of action. Their power lies in the fact that they would respect none of the limitations which justice and morality would impose on them; and [they] have a more direct influence over man than the artificial and tedious discipline that tends to order and self-restraint, law and morality.
Action | Aims | Discipline | Influence | Justice | Law | Man | Morality | Order | Power | Respect | Restraint | Self | Respect |
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Taste is the faculty of judging an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful.
When the thinking man has conquered the temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward.
There is no sin we can be tempted to commit, but we shall find a greater satisfaction in resisting than in committing.
Sin |
I must leave you to the satisfaction of your own conscience, which, though a silent panegyric, is yet the best.
When a man's desires are boundless, his labors are endless. They will set him a task he can never go through, and cut him out work he can never finish. The satisfaction he seeks is always absent, and the happiness he aims at is ever at a distance.
The true happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self; and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows; in short, it feels everything it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She does not receive satisfaction from the applauses which she gives herself, but from the admiration which she raises in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theaters and assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon.
Admiration | Conversation | Enemy | Enjoyment | Existence | Nature | Noise | Receive | Self | Solitude | Wants | World | Friendship | Happiness |
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself, seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
Behavior | Care | Conduct | Heart | Man | Mind | Opinion | Public | World |
The overcoming of private property means the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it means this emancipation precisely because these senses and qualities have become human both subjectively and objectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object derived from and for the human being. The senses have therefore become theoreticians immediately in their practice. They try to relate themselves to their subject matter for its own sake, but the subject matter itself is an objective human relation to itself and to the human being, and vice versa. Need or satisfaction have thus lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.
Means | Nature | Need | Object | Practice | Property | Qualities | Vice |