This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
I believe in everything; nothing is sacred, I believe in nothing; everything is sacred, …Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee.
It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.
Absolute | Action | Feelings | Impression | Judgment | Man | Reason | Sacred | Sense | Understanding | Intellect |
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
I would employ the word noetic to express all those cognitions which originate in the mind itself.
Meaning | Understanding | Intellect |
We can see that the mind is at every stage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of others, of the rest, by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The highest and most celebrated mental products are filtered from the data chosen by the faculty below that - which mass was in turn sifted from a still larger amount of simpler material, and so on.
When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception.
My Lord Anson, at the Admiralty, sends word to Chatham, then confined to his chamber by one of his most violent attacks of the gout, that it is impossible for him to fit out a naval expedition within the period to which he is limited. "Impossible!" cried Chatham, glaring at the messenger; "who talks to me of impossibilities?" Then starting to his feet, and forcing out great drops of agony on his brow with the excruciating torment of the effort, he exclaimed, "Tell Lord Anson that he serves under a minister who treads on impossibilities!"
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Five are the varieties of obstruction; the varieties of infirmity due to organic defect are twenty-eight; complacency is nine-fold and attainment is eight-fold.
Complacency | Intellect |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
This is an intellectual creation, termed obstruction, infirmity, complacency and attainment. Through the disparity in influence of the gunas, its varieties are fifty.
Individual | Self | Intellect |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Since it is the intellect (buddhi) which accomplishes the fruition of all that is to be enjoyed by the Self (purusha), it is also that which discerns the subtle difference between Nature (pradhana) and the Self (purusha).
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
From the shock of triple misery comes the desire to know the means of prevention; nor is the enquiry superfluous because of visible remedies, for these cannot secure certain and permanent relief.
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Primordial matter (mulaprakriti) is the root, not a product; the seven principles beginning with the great Intellect (mahat) are both products and productive; the sixteen are mere products; the Self (purusha) is neither a product nor productive.
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
So through study of principles (tattvas) arises the ultimate, undistracted, pure knowledge that neither I am, nor is anything mine nor am I embodied.
Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it.
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code; so there are, as a rule, two copies of the latter in the fertilized egg cell, which forms the earliest stage of the future individual. In calling the structure of the chromosome fibres a code-script we mean that the all-penetrating mind, once conceived by Laplace, to which every causal connection lay immediately open, could tell from their structure whether the egg would develop, under suitable conditions, into a black cock or into a speckled hen, into a fly or a maize plant, a rhododendron, a beetle, a mouse or a woman. To which we may add, that the appearances of the egg cells are very often remarkably similar; and even when they are not, as in the case of the comparatively gigantic eggs of birds and reptiles, the difference is not so much in the relevant structures as in the nutritive material which in these cases is added for obvious reasons. But the term code-script is, of course, too narrow. The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power, or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder's craft-in one.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Thus the same statement that guarantees that God exists and that his most suitable name is He Who Is, also reveals to us the perfect simplicity of the divine essence. And indeed, God did not say: I am this or that, but simply I Am. I am what? I am ‘I Am.’ So, more than ever, the statement of Exodus seems to soar above in a kind of empty space, where the attraction of the weight of philosophy can no longer be felt. The work of reason is good, healthy, and important, for it proves that, left to itself, philosophy can establish with certitude the existence of the primary being whom everyone calls God. But a single word of the sacred text at once puts us in personal relations with him. We say his name, and by the simple fact of saying it, it teaches us the simplicity of the divine essence.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
He (a new philosopher) still needs to be taught, not this time philosophy, but to philosophize.