This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end, death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry.
Even while we mourn the death of a loved one, there is room in our hearts for thankfulness for that life… Sober reflection can also lead us to a more sympathetic appreciation of the vital role death plays in the economy of life. Life’s significant and zest issue from our awareness of its transiency, its “fragile contingency.” The urge to create, the passion to perfect, the will to heal and cure – all the noblest of human enterprises grow in the soil of human mortality.
Appreciation | Awareness | Death | Life | Life | Mourn | Passion | Reflection | Thankfulness | Will | Appreciation | Awareness |
Live your life with death in it. Death is just another path… one that we all must take.
Existence embraces both life and death, and in a way death is the test of the meaning of life. If death is devoid of meaning, then life is absurd. Life’s ultimate meaning remains obscure unless it is reflected upon the face of death.
It is the Christian hope that to life lived in the presence of God. Death is but the entrance into a larger life. It is the Christian hope that in the larger fellowship of God’s sons for time and eternity there is no final separation from those we love. It is the Christian hope that whether life comes early or late, no life is fruitless, no personality prized by God as an infinitely precious creation is snuffed out like a candle in the dark.
Death | Eternity | God | Hope | Life | Life | Love | Personality | Time | God |
Death is the radical refutation of man’s power and a stark reminder of the necessity to relate to a meaning which lies beyond the dimension of human time. Humanity without death would be arrogance without end. Nobility has its root in humanity, and humanity derived much of its power from the thought of death.
Arrogance | Death | Humanity | Man | Meaning | Necessity | Nobility | Power | Thought | Time | Thought |
Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax
In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?
Death | Inevitable | Knowing | Love | Means |
Mikhail Gorbachev, fully Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
The present-day global landscape is one of profound crisis, which could end either in the death of humankind or in the breakthrough to a new civilization. . . . It is up to all of us who live today on this planet.
Civilization | Day | Death | Global | Present |
Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of the night.
Creativity | Death | Majority | Soul |
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
Civilization | Death | Men | Plan |
Stephen Larsen, fully H. Stephen Larsen
Our imaging and personifying of death affects life values.
What has been, will forever exist. Death is mere appearance.
Appearance | Death | Will |