This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
This is the difference between religion and philosophy. Religion begins with the sense of the ineffable; philosophy ends with the sense of the ineffable. Religion begins where philosophy ends.
Ends | Philosophy | Religion | Sense |
Its effects on the soul is to be measured neither by the guilt nor by the temporal punishment inexorably fixed, but by that deep sense of loneliness it brings with it.
Guilt | Loneliness | Punishment | Sense | Soul |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
The doctrine of original sin is a theological perversion of natural fact. It is a fact that all human beings begin life with an equipment of instincts, impulses, and desires, at war with one another and often out of harmony with the realities of eth physical, social, and spiritual world. Sin and the sense of sin will always be with us, to torture and weigh down; but… the religion of the future will try to prevent men’s being afflicted with the sense of sin, rather than encourage it, and then attempt to cure it.
Doctrine | Future | Harmony | Life | Life | Men | Religion | Sense | Sin | Torture | War | Will | World |
The real tragedy is that we’re all human beings, and human beings have a sense of dignity. Any domination by one human over another leads to a loss of some part of his dignity. Is one’s dignity that big it can be crumbled away like that?
The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or fear. Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us. It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man’s answer is elicited.
Awe | Beginning | Consciousness | Eternal | Faith | Fear | Isolation | Man | Mystery | Question | Religion | Sense | Soul | Wonder |
He must summon his people to be with him – yet stand above, not squat beside them. He must question his own wisdom and judgment – but not too severely. He must hear the opinions and heed the powers of others – but not too abjectly. He must appease the doubts of his critic and assuage the hurts of the adversary – sometimes. He must ignore their views and achieve their defeat – sometimes… He must respect action – without becoming intoxicated with his own. He must have a sense of purpose inspiring him to magnify the trivial event to serve his distant aim – and to grasp the thorniest crisis as if it were the merest nettle. He must be pragmatic, calculating, and earthbound – and still know when to spurn the arithmetic of expediency for the act of brave imagination, the sublime gamble with no hope other than the boldness of his vision
Action | Boldness | Critic | Defeat | Hope | Imagination | Judgment | People | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Respect | Sense | Vision | Wisdom | Respect | Crisis |
There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, of being called upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.
Awareness | Consciousness | Gratitude | Man | Mystery | Sense | Awareness |
Things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
What the world needs is a sense of ultimate embarrassment. Modern man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion. We are guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence; we are guilty of distorting our goals and misrepresenting our souls. We are better than our assertions, more intricate, more profound than our theories maintain.
Better | Disease | Existence | Goals | Man | Meaning | Poverty | Power | Sense | Suspicion | Theories | Wealth | Wisdom | World | Guilty |
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments... Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time... Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time.
Eternal | Life | Life | Religion | Sacred | Sense | Time | Wealth |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
This is the nature of the unenlightened mind: the sense organs, which are limited in scope and ability, randomly gather information. This partial information is arranged into judgments, which are based on previous judgments, which are usually based on someone’s else’s foolish ideas. These false concepts and ideas are then stored in a highly selective memory system. Distortion upon distortion: the mental energy flows constantly through contorted and inappropriate channels, and the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.
Ability | Energy | Ideas | Memory | Mind | Nature | Sense | System |
The construction of a coherent, unified sense of self is an ongoing process. We have seen how old people express an identity through themes which are rooted in personal experience, particular structural factors, and a constellation of value orientations. Themes integrate these three sources of meaning as they structure the account of a life, express what is salient to the individual, and define a continuous and creative self.
Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Self | Sense | Old | Value |
E. Stanley Jones, fully Eli Stanley Jones
Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life. It gives us something to sharpen our souls on. The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future. If we saw all good things which are coming to us, we would sit down and denigrate. If we saw all the evil things, we would be paralyzed. How merciful is God is to lift the curtain on today; and as we get strength today to meet tomorrow, then to lift the curtain on the morrow. He is a considerate God.
Adventure | Anticipation | Dread | Evil | Future | God | Good | Life | Life | Sense | Strength | Tomorrow | God |
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false, and the false with the true.
Hate | Man | Objectivity | Personality | Sense | Ugly | Unity |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The sense of boredom which… appears in analysis is simply an expression of the monotony and poverty of ideas, not of the unconscious… but of the analyst.
The ultimate grounding of obligation, and finally of all morality, is a single but universal relationship between each and all… a sense of duty grounded in the recognition of the intrinsic worth of persons.
Duty | Morality | Obligation | Relationship | Sense | Worth |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
The core paradox that underlies spirituality is the haunting sense of incompleteness, of being somehow unfinished, that comes from the reality of living on this earth as part and yet also not-part of it. For to be human is to be incomplete, yet year for completion; it is to be uncertain, yet long for certainty; to be imperfect, yet long for perfection; to be broken, yet crave wholeness. All these yearnings remain necessarily unsatisfied, for perfection, completion, certainty, and wholeness are impossible precisely because we are imperfectly human – or better, because we are perfectly human, which is to say humanly imperfect.
Better | Earth | Paradox | Perfection | Reality | Sense | Spirituality | Wholeness | Yearnings |