This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A true teacher should penetrate to whatever is vital in his pupil, and develop that by the light and heat of his own intelligence.
Intelligence | Light | Wisdom | Teacher |
Knowledge once gained casts a light beyond its own immediate boundaries.
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
In Godmanhood human freedom unites with the divine freedom, the human image with the divine image. By inward experience and inward living of freedom the light of that Truth is attained.
Experience | Freedom | Light | Truth |
Our personal question about our life’s purpose may very well be the tip as well as the foundation of the collective iceberg – part of the much larger question of where do we go from here? If we consider these individual longings in light of systems thinking, perhaps we can see them, not as isolated, narcissistic musings, but as equivalent to the DNA of our soul, the generative driver of evolution itself.
Evolution | Individual | Life | Life | Light | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Soul | Thinking |
Love also sheds light on our desire for happiness. The desire for love is connected with the desire for happiness. But no one who truly loves can in good faith reduce love to the pursuit of happiness. Love is more bittersweet than that. True love, be it romantic, familial or platonic, persists through happiness and has as its subject the welfare of the persons loved, not the lover. Love, then, reflects the important role of happiness in the meaningful life, but also the shallowness of seeing happiness as all.
Desire | Faith | Good | Important | Life | Life | Light | Love | Happiness |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The art of art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter from triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence.
Beauty | Eternal | Excellence | Joy | Laughter | Light | Pain | Passion | Riches | Soul | Truth | World | Riches | Hardship | Beauty |
If justice prevails, good faith is found in treaties, truth in transaction, order in government, the earth is at peace, and heaven itself sheds overus its beneficent light and radiates down to us its blessed influence.
Earth | Faith | Good | Government | Heaven | Influence | Justice | Light | Order | Peace | Truth | Blessed |
A hundred years are no more than the dream of a butterfly. Looking back, how one sighs for the things of the past! Yesterday spring came; this morning the flowers wither. Let us hasten with the forfeit cup before the night is spent and the lamp goes out.
Past |