This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL
The supreme desire of everything, and that first given by nature, is to return to its source; and since God is the source of our souls and Maker of them… to him this soul desires above all to return.
Don Marquis, fully Donald Robert Perry Marquis
All religion, all life, all art, all expression come down to this: to the effort of the human soul to break through its barrier of loneliness, of intolerable loneliness, and make some contact with another seeking soul, or with what all souls seek, which is (by any name) God.
Art | Effort | God | Life | Life | Loneliness | Religion | Soul |
Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin
We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.
Reality |
Nobility of soul is more honorable than nobility of birth.
It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observation of time and place and of decency in general that what is called taste consists; and which is in reality no other that a more refined judgment. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Cause | Judgment | Manners | Observation | Reality | Skill | Taste | Time | Wrong |
Man is to a great degree a creature of his own making and, when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation.
Man |
Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.
Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |
One ship drives east, and another west with the self-same winds that blow: `tis the set of the sails and not the gales, which decides the way we go. Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate, as they voyage along through life; “tis the will of the soul that decides the goal, and not the calm or the strife.
With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun. The past has shrived and buried deep all yesterdays; there let them sleep. Concern yourself with but today, woo it, and teach it to obey your will and wish. Since time began today has been the friend of man; but in his blindness and his sorrow, he looks to yesterday and tomorrow. You, and today! a soul sublime, and the great pregnant hour of time, with God himself to bind the twain! Go forth, I say - attain, attain! With God himself to bind the twain.
Friend | God | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Past | Sorrow | Soul | Teach | Time | Tomorrow | Will | God | Think |
Let to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose... There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden, or even your bathtub.
Life | Life | Need | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Silence | Will |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
Experience | Soul |
All success consists in this: you are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this.
Consciousness | Humanity | Success |
His momentous achievements are rarely the result of a clean forward thrust but rather of a soul intensity generated in front of an apparently insurmountable obstacle which bars his way to a cherished goal.
In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes - courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
Alchemy | Compassion | Courage | Duty | Evil | Faith | Good | Honor | Hope | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Man | Ruthlessness | Soul |
If we can, at least occasionally, sever the chains that bind us to our material world and turn inward, we are rewarded by an expansion of our consciousness and a corresponding insight into the realities beyond this three-dimensional world. We will then become aware of our true spiritual potential, of what has been called the “divine spark” that dwells in every one of us.
Consciousness | Insight | Will | World |