This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the older order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
Experience | Fear | Incredulity | Mankind | Nothing | Order | Success |
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 |
J. C. Masterman, fully Sir John Cecil Masterman
We can learn from experience if we are ready to adapt that experience to changed conditions.
Experience | Learn |
This solitary response to reality is the deepest religious experience one can have. It is turning from the periphery of life to the core of existence. In this solitary moment it is as if one entered into the scheme of things.
Existence | Experience | Life | Life | Reality |
Robert M. Linder, fully Robert Mitchell Linder
Only by being permitted to experience the consequences of his actions will the child acquire a sense of responsibility; and within the limits marked by the demands of his safety this must be done. From such training we can expect many benefits to the person, one of which will certainly be the development of a natural rather than an imposed control over [himself].
Consequences | Control | Experience | Responsibility | Sense | Training | Will | Child |
Children who are closer to their birth, and thus to the experience of oneness, rightly reject hypocrisy.
Birth | Children | Experience | Hypocrisy | Oneness |
Our fortunes and lives seem chaotic when they are looked at as facts. There is order and meaning only in the great truths believed by everybody in that older wiser time of the world when things were less well known but better understood.
life begins here upon earth, and the soul of man lives and breathes where it loves; and love, in living faith, has strength enough to make the soul of man experience unity with God – two natures in a single spirit and love.
Earth | Enough | Experience | Faith | God | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Spirit | Strength | Unity | God |
The best way to teach our young people the meaning of our democratic freedoms is to demonstrate, by our own example, that we have mastered the 'three R's of citizenship' - Rights, Respects, and Responsibilities.
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Transcendent, mystical, and spiritual experiences have a real biological component. The neurological changes that occur during meditation disrupt the normal processes of the brain – perceptually, emotionally, and linguistically – in ways that make the experience indescribable, awe-inspiring, unifying, and indelibly real. In fact, the intensity of such experiences often gives the practitioner a sense that a different or higher level of reality exists beyond our everyday perceptions of the world.
Awe | Experience | Meditation | Mystical | Reality | Sense | World |
They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.
Absence | Comfort | Death | Kill | Love | Society | World | Friendship | Society | Friends |
To seek to give life meaning is to seek to transcend the limits of one’s individual life.
Individual | Life | Life | Meaning |
Nikhilananda, fully Swami Nikhilananda, born Dinesh Chandra Das Gupta NULL
A spiritual truth is valid only when it does not contradict universal reason, one’s inner experience, and the experience of other seers of truth.
Experience | Reason | Truth |
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women.
Absence | Balance | Day | God | Justice | Men | Order | Peace | War |
Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship. If Absence be not Death, neither is it theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as Friends do the Seas; they live in one another still.
More and more, we are all becoming aware that our lives are being lived for us by influences that, however numerous they appear, are in fact only so many reflections of one kind of movement in the life of man, a movement toward externals, toward needs and gratifications that, however justified in their own right, become destructive when they pretend to represent the whole meaning of human life.
Children do not extract meaning from what they hear others saying; they try, instead, to relate what has been said to what is going on.