This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.
Rufus Jones, fully Rufus Matthew Jones
[Conscience] is the voice of our ideal self, our complete self, our real self, laying its call upon the will.
Character | Conscience | Self | Will |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?... Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest on futilities.
The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions - decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment - are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after-dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below.
Character | Conversation | Ideas | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Philosophy | Right |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as to a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.
Action | Character | God | Mind | Truth | Understanding | Wishes | God | Understand |
Wilma Mankiller, fully Wilma Pearl Mankiller
The meaning of life is to live in balance and harmony with every other living thing in creation. We must all strive to understand the interconnectedness of all living things and accept our individual role in the protection and support of other life forms on earth. We must also understand our own insignificance in the totality of things.
Balance | Character | Earth | Harmony | Individual | Insignificance | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
The best thing about philosophy is that it fails. It is better that philosophy fail to totalize meaning for it thereby remains open to the irreducible otherness of transcendence.
Better | Character | Meaning | Philosophy |
There is no right without parallel duty, no liberty without the supremacy of the law, no high destiny without earnest perseverance, no greatness without self-denial.
Character | Destiny | Duty | Greatness | Law | Liberty | Perseverance | Right | Self | Self-denial |
The Divine Mind communicates with the human mind through the imagination. A prayer, therefore, should be offered in the form of a mental image. Man must visualize the thing he desires, he must use his imaginative powers to form his petition in terms clearly outlined in his own mind. The profound concentration of attention and thought which this form of prayer requires fills also the heart with deep earnestness and devotion. Man must pray whole-heartedly as well as wholemindedly; he must believe in his heart that his well-being depends completely upon his prayer.
Attention | Character | Devotion | Earnestness | Heart | Imagination | Man | Mind | Prayer | Thought | Thought |
James Mackintosh, fully Sir James Mackintosh
It is right to be contented with what we have, never with what we are.
Madmen... do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles. For, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them.
Character | Ideas | Men | Mistake | Principles | Right | Wrong |