This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.
There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.
The faith state...is the psychic correlate of a biological growth reducing contending-desires to one direction.
Character | Faith | Human nature | Nature |
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
The new ardor which burns in his breast consumes in its glow the lower noes which formerly beset him, and keeps him immune against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature. Magnanimities once impossible are now easy; paltry conventionalities and mean incentives once tyrannical hold no sway. The stone wall inside of him has fallen, the hardness in his heart has broken down. The rest of us can, I think, imagine this by recalling our state of feeling in those temporary melting moods into which either the trials of real life, or the theatre, or a novel sometimes throws us. Especially if we weep! For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading. With most of us the customary hardness quickly returns, but not so with saintly persons. Many saints, even as energetic ones as Teresa and Loyola, have possessed what the church traditionally reveres as a special grace, the so-called gift of tears. In these persons the melting mood seems to have held almost uninterrupted control. And as it is with tears and melting moods, so it is with other exalted affections. Their reign may come by gradual growth or by a crisis; but in either case it may have come to stay.
Action | Faith | Man | Nature | Necessity | Present | Truth | Will |
O powerful love, that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some other, a man a beast.
Sound |
Ornament is but the gilded shore to a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf veiling an Indian; beauty, in a word, the seeming truth which cunning times put on to entrap the wisest.
Time |
On, on, you noble English, whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof, fathers that like so many Alexanders have in these parts from morn till even fought and sheathed their swords for lack of argument dishonor not your mothers; now attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you!
In the same winter quarter, beginning in January, 1896, I taught a class for the Disciples Divinity House, in the divinity school of the university, on the theology of Alexander Campbell. This enabled me to work over again the relation of his thought to that of John Lock, which had so much interested me while I was working on my thesis the previous year. With a class of eight graduate students it was possible to have reports and discussions on various problems. Our excitement ran high, for the “discovery†of the relation between Campbell and Locke gave new meaning to Disciple history and placed it in a stream of thought that was influencing modern science and philosophy with what Locke himself called “a new way of ideas.†It was the empirical and pragmatic temper applied in religious matters. This meant not only a lessened emphasis upon traditional theology and speculative metaphysics but a refection of their assumptions and methods. Like Locke, Campbell also rejected the “inner light†and “enthusiasm†as grounds for religious assurance. Both held to the possibility of revelation, but both insisted that any alleged revelation must be brought to the test of reason.
If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.
The worst effect of sin is within, and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.
Consciousness | Defeat | Faith | Hope |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
The illness I suffer from is serious and persistent and my life may be over any day. Whenever I think about you, I become sad and depressed. In my leisure time I have written Precepts for My Daughters in seven chapters. My daughters, each of you make yourself a copy; perhaps it will be of some use and benefit to you. Do your very best once you have left home!
Birth | Day | Duty | Esteem | Labor | Play | Practice | Regard | Worship |
Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya
Harmony should be valued and quarrels should be avoided. Everyone has his biases, and few men are far-sighted. Therefore some disobey their lords and fathers and keep up feuds with their neighbors. But when the superiors are in harmony with each other and the inferiors are friendly, then affairs are discussed quietly and the right view of matters prevails.
To know means to record in one's memory; but to understand means to blend with the thing and to assimilate it oneself.
On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family life
Whoever lets himself be led by the heart will never lose his way.
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.
Consciousness | Nothing |
ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged. JULIET: Then have my lips the sin that they have took. ROMEO: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again. Juliet: You kiss by the book.
Little |