This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are three material things, not only useful, but essential to life. No one “knows how to live” till he has got them. These are pure air, water and earth. There are three immaterial things, not only useful, but essential to life. No one knows how to live till he has got them also. These are admiration, hope and love. Admiration - the power of discerning and taking delight in what is beautiful in visible form and lovely in human character; and, necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful in form and to become what is lovely in character. Hope - the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or others; necessarily issuing in the straightforward and undisappointable effort to advance, according to our proper power, the gaining of them. Love - both of family and neighbor, faithful and satisfied.
Admiration | Better | Character | Earth | Effort | Family | Foresight | Hope | Life | Life | Love | Power |
Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.
Time |
We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea. To say that the divinity informs all things is condemned as pantheism. But pantheism is a misleading word. It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but that is not the idea at all. The idea is… of an undefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being.
Brotherhood | Divinity | God | Life | Life | Mystery | Nature | Power | Thought | Wisdom | World | God | Learn | Thought |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
The most generous dreams of the past have not become immediate practical necessities: a word-wide cooperation of people, a more just distribution of al the goods of life; the use of knowledge and energy or the service of life, and the use of life itself for the extension of the human spirit to provinces where human values and purposes could not heretofore penetrate. If we awaken in time to overcome the automatisms and irrational compulsions that are now pushing nations toward destruction, we shall create a universal community.
Cooperation | Dreams | Energy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nations | Past | People | Service | Spirit | Time |
Religion is fire which example keeps alive, and which goes out if not communicated.
All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. In one atom are found all the elements of the earth; in one motion of the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence; in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the endless oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence.
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
The tendency of man's nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
Acting and becoming are one. God and I are one in this work: He acts and I become. Fire transforms all things it touches into its own nature. The wood does not change the fire itself, but the fire changes the wood into itself. In the same way we are transformed into God so that we may know him as he is.
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
It is true that water will flow indifferently to east and west, but will it flow equally well up and down? Human nature is disposed toward goodness, just as water tends to flow downwards. There is no water but flows downwards, and no man but shows his tendency to be good. Now, by striking water hard, you may splash it higher than your forehead, an by damming it, you may make it go uphill. But, is that the nature of water? It is external force that causes it to do so. Likewise, if a man is made to do what is not good, his nature is being similarly forced.
Norman Mailer, fully Norman Kingsley Mailer
Money bears the same relation to social solutions that water does to blood.
Money |
The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire make a small amount of heat.
Achievement | Desire | Mind |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Death is not the end: it is temporary emancipation... the land to which souls go at death - they enjoy a freedom such as they never knew during their earthly life. So don’t pity the person who is passing through the delusion of death, for in a little while he will be free. Once he gets out of that delusion, he sees that death was not so bad after all. He realizes that his mortality was only a dream and rejoices that now no fire can burn him, no water can drown him; he is free and safe.
Death | Delusion | Freedom | Land | Life | Life | Little | Pity | Safe | Will |
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Circumstances | Danger | Free speech | Man | Nature | Panic | Present | Question | Right | Speech | Will | Words | Danger |
[In the cave allegory] those whose who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.
Difficulty | Duty | Light | Man | Nothing | Philosophy | Regard | Time | Truth | Will |
Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country... But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers.
Government | People | Government |
The world basically and fundamentally is constituted on the basis of harmony. Everything works in cooperation with something else.
Cooperation | Harmony | World |