This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, and the dimpling stream runs laughing by; when the air does laugh with our merry wit, and the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
Man | Perception | Will |
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
The things of the world are ever rising and falling, and in perpetual change; and this change must be according to the will of God, as He has bestowed upon man neither the wisdom nor the power to enable him to check it. The great lesson in these things is, that man must strengthen himself doubly at such times to fulfill his duty and to do what is right, and must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.
Energy | Individual | Man | Need | Perception | Reason | Research | Spirit | Study | Truth |
Willard Gibbs, fully Josiah Willard Gibbs
We avoid the gravest difficulties when, giving up the attempt to frame hypotheses concerning the constitution of matter, we pursue statistical inquiries as a branch of rational mechanics.
Behavior | Enough | Order | Perception |
I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.
God | Love | Nature | Perception | God |
Sexual inhibition alters the structure of the economically suppressed individual in such a manner that he thinks, feels and acts against his own material interests.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Experience | Extreme | Fear | Perception | Pleasure | System |
The prophet is engaged in a battle for language in an effort to create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge.
You may say you are already doing this; you see and hear nothing of worldly ways, you do not employ your bodily senses more than is necessary. If indeed you are doing this you have closed a large window in this image, but you are not yet safe, because you have not closed the hidden openings of your imagination. So if you deliberately allow yourself to consider the vanities of this world, or to think of comfort and ease, then, although your soul may remain in you as far as the bodily senses are concerned, it is in fact being lured away by these vain fancies.
God | Little | Love | Perception | Reason | Soul | Sound | God |
Theologically, however, the freedom and hope of the local tradition of the church depends upon trusting and saying aloud the conviction that the U.S. empire does not finally merit fear, trust, or eventually obedience.
Consciousness | Culture | Perception |
If we believe that this particular pain is the one that will push the baby out of the womb and into our arms, we somehow try to make a place for that pain in our heart. Pain is still there: excruciating, terrible pain. But at the moment of birth, we rarely feel betrayal or rage; we somehow feel that this is simply pain that has come with life.
People | Perception | Rest | Sabbath | Time | Wisdom | Work |
Pitiless verse? A few words tuned and tuned and tuned and tuned. It is good.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
Awakening | Consciousness | Memory | Perception |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other's salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?
Darkness | Perception | Perfection |
It is as important to cultivate your silence power as your word power.
Consciousness | Perception | Psychology | Sense |
Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
Abstract | Perception | Struggle |
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
This [faculty], to which I give the name of the “elaborative faculty,â€â€”the faculty of relations or comparisons,—constitutes what is properly denominated thought.
Knowledge | Language | Perception | Sense |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The constituents (gunas) consist in the pleasant, the painful and the delusive; they serve the purpose of illumination, activity and restraint; they are mutually dominating, dependent, productive, cooperative and coexistent.
Nature | Perception | Self |