This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Faith faces everything that makes the world uncomfortable - pain, fear, loneliness, shame, death - and acts with a compassion by which these things are transformed, even exalted.
Compassion | Death | Faith | Fear | Loneliness | Pain | Shame | World |
Christian contemplation is not something esoteric and dangerous. It is simply the experience of god that is given to a soul purified by humility and faith.
Contemplation | Experience | Faith | God | Humility | Soul | God | Contemplation |
Make divine knowledge thy food, compassion thy store-keeper, and the voice which is in every heart the pipe to call to repast.
Compassion | Heart | Knowledge |
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Human morality is composed of four interconnecting principles: a genetic predisposition toward survival, the neural development of the brain, a social imperative toward group cohesion, and a cognitive propensity to make distinctions between right and wrong and good and evil. Our moral continuum appears to be strongly influenced by the degrees of connectedness we feel with others; the more connected we feel, the more we act with generosity, compassion and fairness.
Compassion | Evil | Fairness | Generosity | Good | Morality | Principles | Right | Survival | Wrong |
Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.
Calmness | Compassion | Happy | Indifference | Mind |
Maggie Ross, pen name for Martha Reeves
Pain is the source of compassion, and compassion shifts our perspective on pain, which frees us from the fear of death.
Compassion | Death | Fear | Pain |
Fear is the anticipation and expectation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good. Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery. Fear is “a surrender of the succors which reason offers,” awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us. Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but, on the contrary, draws us near to it. That is why awe is compatible with both love and joy.
Anticipation | Awe | Evil | Expectation | Fear | Good | Hope | Humility | Joy | Love | Mystery | Object | Pain | Reason | Sense | Surrender | Wonder | World | Expectation |
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Compassion | Man | Peace | Will |
The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.
Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.
If enough people consider compassion to be important, then the world becomes a more compassionate place.
Compassion | Enough | Important | People | World |
Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Beauty | Compassion | Nature |
We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
Beauty | Compassion | Despair | Dogma | Faith | Fear | Hope | Ignorance | Joy | Learning | Love | Optimism | Pessimism | Reason | Selfishness | Sin | Truth | Beauty |