This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion too!
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Learn to see God in all persons, of whatever race or creed. You will know what divine love is when you begin to feel your oneness with every human being, not before. In mutual service we forget the little self and glimpse the one measureless self, the spirit that unifies all men.
Creed | God | Little | Love | Men | Oneness | Race | Self | Service | Spirit | Will | God |
Panchatantra or The Panchatantra NULL
All fortune belongs to him who has a contented mind. Is not the whole earth covered with leather for him whose feet are encased in shoes?
It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
Cost | Hope | Liberty | Man | Men | Salvation | Spirit | Struggle | Truth | Wise |
Life seems to me like a Japanese picture which our imagination does not allow to end with the margin. We aim at the infinite and when our arrow falls to earth it is in flames.
Earth | Imagination | Life | Life |
Of all the virtues, is not wisdom the one which the mass of mankind are always claiming, and which most arrouses in them a spirit of contention and lying conceit of wisdom?
Contention | Lying | Mankind | Spirit | Wisdom |
The whole of man’s life on the face of Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matter. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate.
Earth | Life | Life | Man | Money | Power | Search | Soul | Will | Wisdom |
When a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs... and his whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song, in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his soul.
Life | Life | Man | Melancholy | Music | Passion | Play | Soul | Spirit | Waste |
Evils... can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the Gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the earthly nature and this mortal sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise.
Earth | God | Good | Heaven | Mortal | Nature | Necessity | Wise |
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe; and science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; and music lifted up the listening spirit until it walked, except from mortal care, Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound.
Care | Earth | Heaven | Listening | Man | Mind | Mortal | Music | Science | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Thought | Universe |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes m ore conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.
Appearance | Fortune | Good | Greatness | Spirit | Will | World |
By the time you rise through the ranks, the culture of homogenization has bred the spirit and imagination out of you.
Culture | Imagination | Spirit | Time |
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you will begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered by your old nonsense.
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.