This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion
There is an experience of being in pure consciousness which gives lasting peace to the soul. It is an experience of the Ground or Depth of being in the Centre of the soul, an awareness of the mystery of being beyond sense and thought, which gives a sense of fulfillment, of finality, of absolute truth.
Absolute | Awareness | Consciousness | Experience | Fulfillment | Mystery | Peace | Sense | Soul | Thought | Truth | Awareness |
Do you have the courage of your desires, or have you always considered your yearnings as idle and unproductive? Do you feel the wonder of existence, your own and that of everything? Does it truly do justice to that wonder to see it as an illusion or as a product of chance?
Chance | Courage | Existence | Illusion | Justice | Wonder | Yearnings |
It is earnestly desired that each man should be wise enough to govern himself without the intervention of any compulsory restraint; and, since government, even in its best state, is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at is that we should have as little of it as the general peace of human society permit.
Enough | Evil | Government | Little | Man | Object | Peace | Restraint | Society | Wise | Society | Govern |
There is not even one single thing we value when we restrict the question to ethical values. Instead, there is a plurality of different things we value, but in ethics and in life in general. In life we value pleasure, human interaction, achievement and contact with reality. In ethics we value human flourishing but also commitment and justice per se… No single set of rules seems adequate to the irreducible plurality of incommensurable things that we value.
Achievement | Commitment | Ethics | Justice | Life | Life | Pleasure | Question | Reality | Value |
Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
Life is like a tapestry that we view from the wrong side. We see all the strands and knots, and it makes no sense from the back. But there is a different view of the whole things to which we are assured some day we will be privy. In the meanwhile, there are all these knots we have to deal with existentially; the path has been charted – compassion and justice – imbued by vision. And it’s up to the individual.
Compassion | Day | Individual | Justice | Life | Life | Sense | Vision | Will | Wrong |
Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Shōwa or the Shōwa Emperor NULL
Sublime is the moment when the world is at peace and the limitless deep lies bathed in the morning sun.
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.
Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL
The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed.
J.J.A. Lecomte du Noüy, fully Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ
The world will believe in peace only when the Churches will demonstrate that it can exist.
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice… Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is radiant.
Laws of Manu, aka Manusmṛti, Manusmriti, Manusmruti or Mānava-Dharmaśāstra NULL
Justice, being violated, destroys; justice, being preserved, preserves: therefore justice must not be violated, lest violated justice destroy us.
We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Weapons are tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint. Peace is the highest value.
Fear | Man | Necessity | Peace | Restraint | Weapons | Will |
Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.