This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.
Getters generally don't get happiness; givers get it. You simply give to others a bit of yourself - a thoughtful act, a helpful idea, a word of appreciation., a lift over a rough spot, a sense of understanding, a timely suggestion. You take something out of your mind, garnished in kindness out of your heart, and put it into the other fellow's mind and heart.
Appreciation | Heart | Kindness | Mind | Sense | Understanding | Wisdom |
To keep from gravitating toward genocidal conflict, we must stop demanding perpetual progress. For quiet nonpolitical reasons, governments and politicians cannot achieve the paradise they habitually promise. Political leaders who continue to dangle before their constituents enticing carrots that are becoming unattainable hasten the erosion of faith in political processes. Circumstances have ceased to be what they were when the once-New World’s myth of limitlessness made sense.
Circumstances | Faith | Myth | Paradise | Progress | Promise | Quiet | Sense | Wisdom | World |
No state can be more destitute than that of a person, who, when the delights of sense forsake him, has no pleasures of the mind.
Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz
If the aim of the military action is an equivalent for the political object, that action will in general diminish as the political object diminishes. The more this object comes to the front, the more will this be so. This explains how, without self-contradiction, there can be wars of all degrees of importance and energy, from a war of extermination down to a mere state of armed observation.
Action | Contradiction | Energy | Object | Observation | Self | War | Will | Wisdom |
In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.
Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |
The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.
Action | Experience | Faith | Future | Reality | Religion | Sense | Will | Wisdom |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell. To live in the future is a contradiction in terms. The future is dead, in the perfectly definite sense it is not alive.
Contradiction | Future | Necessity | Nothing | Past | Present | Sense | Wisdom |
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
The artist (in literature) appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain.
Beauty | Capacity | Literature | Mystery | Pain | Pity | Sense | Wisdom | Wonder |
Henri Deterding, fully Henri Wilhelm August Deterding
There is a master key to success with which no man can fail. Its name is simplicity. Simplicity, I mean, in the sense of reducing to the simplest possible terms every problem that besets us. Whenever I have met a business proposition which, after taking thought, I could not reduce to simplicity, I have left it alone.
Business | Man | Sense | Simplicity | Success | Thought | Wisdom | Business |
The fundamental defect in the present state of democracy is the assumption that political and economic freedom can be achieved without first freeing the mind. Freedom of mind is not something that spontaneously happens. It is not achieved by mere absence of obvious restraints. It is a product of constant unremitting nurture of right habits of observation and reflection.
Absence | Democracy | Freedom | Mind | Observation | Present | Reflection | Right | Wisdom |
Individuality is the aim of political liberty.
Individuality | Liberty | Wisdom |
Declaration of American Women NULL
Man-made barriers, laws, social customs and prejudices continue to keep a majority of women in an inferior position without full control of our lives and bodies. From infancy throughout life, in personal and public relations, in the family, in the schools, in every occupation and profession, too often we find our individuality, our capabilities, our earning powers diminished by discriminatory practices and outmoded ideas of what a woman is, what a woman can do, and what a woman must be... We lack effective political and economic power We have only minor and insignificant roles in making, interpreting and enforcing our laws, in running our political parties, businesses, unions, schools and institutions, in directing the media, in governing our country, in deciding issues of war or peace. We do not seek special privileges, but we demand as a human right a full voice and role for women in determining the destiny of our world, our nation, our families and our individual lives.
Control | Destiny | Family | Ideas | Individual | Individuality | Infancy | Life | Life | Majority | Man | Occupation | Peace | Position | Power | Public | Right | War | Wisdom | Woman | World |
"Faith is tendency toward action." According to such a view, faith is the matrix of formulated creeds and the inspiration of endeavor... Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole ultimate authority.
Action | Authority | Experience | Faith | Inspiration | Sense | Wisdom |