This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Under the illusion of passing-time we can have no unity. To be is to have the permanent sense of something else... For integration, ideas that halt time are necessary, and these ideas must feed us continually... The mystery of time is in ourselves... The mystic ocean of existence is not to be crossed as something outside ourselves. It is in oneself... Every further stage of ourselves is within us, above us... Outside us is outer truth; within us, inner truth, and both make up All - the WORLD.
Existence | Ideas | Illusion | Integration | Mystery | Sense | Time | Truth | Unity | Wisdom | World |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
It takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals, as civil wars and political changes bring with them in a matter of such weight - and introduce them into one’s own country.
Corruption | Esteem | Inevitable | Love | Peace | Presumption | Public | Self | Self-love | Wisdom |
Equality is one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler - a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.
Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good. since its objective is the ownership, control, development, processing, distribution, and use of the natural resources for the benefit of the people, it is by its very nature the antithesis of monopoly.
Antithesis | Common Sense | Conservation | Control | Good | Nature | People | Problems | Sense | Wisdom |
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense weigh thy opinion against providence.
Opinion | Providence | Sense | Wisdom |
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.
Excellence | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Observation | Pleasure | Reward | Strength | Wisdom |
The finest fruit of serious learning should be the ability to speak the word God without reserve or embarrassment. And it should be spoken without adolescent resentment, rather with some sense of communion, with reverence and with joy.
Ability | God | Joy | Learning | Resentment | Reserve | Reverence | Sense | Wisdom | God |
If one should tell of a telescope so exactly made as to have the power of seeing; of a whispering gallery that had the power of haring; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to have the power of memory; or of a machine so delicate as to feel pain when it was touched - such absurdities are so shocking to common sense that they would not find belief even among savages; yet it is the same absurdity to think that the impressions of external objects upon the machine of our bodies can be the real efficient cause of thought and perception.
Belief | Cause | Common Sense | Memory | Pain | Perception | Power | Sense | Thought | Wisdom | Absurdity | Think | Thought |
Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
Action | Glory | God | Honor | Life | Life | Meditation | Reward | Soul | Wisdom | God |
Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or the instrument of government - but the reverse... If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom, no religious freedom, no freedom of families to make their own decisions [regarding having children]. All these freedoms tend to reinforce on another.
Children | Freedom | Government | Society | Will | Wisdom | Government |
Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly
The advance planning and sense stimuli employed to capture a $10 million cigarette or soap market are nothing compared to the brain-washing and propaganda blitzes used to ensure control of the largest cash market in the world - the Executive Branch of the United States Government.
Control | Government | Nothing | Sense | Wisdom | World | Propaganda |
Every political society is composed of other smaller societies of different kinds, each of which has its interests and its rules of conduct: but those societies which everybody perceives, because they have an external and authorized form, are not the only ones that actually exist in the State... Unhappily personal interest is always found in inverse ratio to duty, and increases in proportion as the association grows narrower, and the engagement less sacred; which irrefragably proves that the most general will always the most just also, and that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.
Association | Conduct | Duty | God | People | Sacred | Society | Will | Wisdom | Association | Society | Engagement |
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Egotism erects its center in itself: love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing public, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment, or with the view of a martyr’s crown - indifferent whether the reward is tin this life or in the next.
Aims | Despot | Enjoyment | Gratitude | Life | Life | Love | Public | Reward | Solitude | Truth | Unity | Wisdom | Following |
Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren
If we recognize love, it is by its beauty. If we recognize truth, it is by its beauty. The meaning of life is beauty. When we sense and experience beauty, we are looking straight into the face of the Creator. We achieve transcendent union with the mind of God. We were born to be aware of it and to create more of it.
Beauty | Experience | God | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Sense | Truth | Wisdom |