This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke
The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, “appearing at intervals,” for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race; walking the earth and breathing the air with us, but at the same time walking another earth and breathing another air of which we know little or nothing, but which is, all the same, our spiritual life, as its absence would be our spiritual death. This new race is in act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.
Absence | Character | Death | Earth | Future | Life | Life | Little | Men | Nothing | Race | Time | Truth | Will |
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best a specious an ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a credible kind of ignorance, nothing more.
Better | Character | Idleness | Ignorance | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Study |
Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
Most people are dissatisfied, because too few know that the distance between one and nothing is greater than that between one and a thousand.
Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak NULL
My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold, except things that can be carried away.
Character | Children | Land | Nothing | People | Reason | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |
Something of a person's character may be discovered by observing how he smiles.
Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances.
Harry Blackmun, fully Harold "Harry" Andrew Blackmun
With our finite minds we cannot presume to know if there is a Purpose. We sense, however, the presence of something greater than we can comprehend, a force as yet unknown to us - perhaps even to be unknown. So we accept our situation, learn from it, and do the best we can, resting on faith, despair, or cynicism, depending on the individual. Overriding all this must be an obligation - self-imposed or externally impressed - to do the best one can for others, to relieve suffering and to exercise compassion. We are all in this together, for life is a common, not an individual, endeavor.
Character | Compassion | Cynicism | Despair | Faith | Force | Individual | Life | Life | Obligation | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sense | Suffering | Learn |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.