This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.
Character | Deceit | Light | Man | Modesty | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke
The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, “appearing at intervals,” for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race; walking the earth and breathing the air with us, but at the same time walking another earth and breathing another air of which we know little or nothing, but which is, all the same, our spiritual life, as its absence would be our spiritual death. This new race is in act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.
Absence | Character | Death | Earth | Future | Life | Life | Little | Men | Nothing | Race | Time | Truth | Will |
He who beholds in all beings in the self and the self in all beings, he never turns away from it. When to a man who understands, the self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?
Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.
Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |
The goal of all education, preaching, and instruction is the development of mature individuals who will understand that difficulties in life are Divine-ordained challenges to overcome and opportunities for growth, and not excuses for defeat and self-ruination.
Character | Defeat | Education | Growth | Life | Life | Self | Will | Instruction | Understand |
The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.
Bűchler Sándor or Alexander Bűchler
Suffering should lead man to self-inspection... to the admission of errors... and to prayer and forgiveness.
What you are is what you have been, what you will be is what you do now.
Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork
In the past few decades American institutions have struggled with the temptations of politics. Professions and academic disciplines that once possessed a life and structure of their own have steadily succumbed, in some cases almost entirely, to the belief that nothing matters beyond politically desirable results, however achieved.
Belief | Character | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Politics |
Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke
The life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain.
Character | Eternal | God | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | God | Happiness |
Harry Blackmun, fully Harold "Harry" Andrew Blackmun
With our finite minds we cannot presume to know if there is a Purpose. We sense, however, the presence of something greater than we can comprehend, a force as yet unknown to us - perhaps even to be unknown. So we accept our situation, learn from it, and do the best we can, resting on faith, despair, or cynicism, depending on the individual. Overriding all this must be an obligation - self-imposed or externally impressed - to do the best one can for others, to relieve suffering and to exercise compassion. We are all in this together, for life is a common, not an individual, endeavor.
Character | Compassion | Cynicism | Despair | Faith | Force | Individual | Life | Life | Obligation | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sense | Suffering | Learn |