This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To reject wisdom because the person who communicates it is uncouth and his manners are inelegant, what is it but to throw away a pineapple and assign for a reason the roughness of its coat?
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Brute strength bereft of reason falls by its own weight.
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
We are not only made in God’s image, but that we are made to image God - to reflect His freedom, joy, compassion and peace in our lives... When religion becomes reduced to an outward observation of rules and ceremonies and an intolerance toward the beliefs of others, we are mistaking the oyster for the pearl. The oyster is certainly valuable, but it is of infinitely greater value when it promotes the growth of the pearl... We cannot reason our way back to the roots of religion. We cannot trap God in stale dogmas or narrow creeds. Our purpose is to make religion a continuous living experience, to lead us toward a resurrection not of the dead but of the living who are dead to their own truth. Then religion becomes a thread that can both link us to the past and guide us to our future.
Compassion | Experience | Freedom | Future | God | Growth | Intolerance | Joy | Observation | Past | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Religion | Truth | Wisdom | God | Value |
'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
The reason for the sublime simplicity in the works of nature lies all too often in the sublime shortsightedness in the observer.
Nature | Reason | Simplicity | Wisdom |
Birth and death are like two ships in a harbor. There is no reason to rejoice at the ship setting out on a journey [birth], not knowing what she may encounter on the high seas, but we should rejoice at the ship returning to port [death] safely.
Knowledge in relationship creates division... knowledge becomes a barrier in relationship... Where there is division there must be conflict. And therefore an action born out of conflict is a non-intelligent action. So intelligent action is an action that is without friction, without conflict... Dependence is an action of a mind that is not intelligent.
Action | Dependence | Knowledge | Mind | Relationship | Wisdom |
Happiness is the greatest paradox in nature. It can grow in any soil, live under any condition. It defies environment. The reason for this is that it does not come from without but from within. Whenever you see a person seeking happiness outside himself, you can be sure he has never found it.
Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz
As there is an infinite number of possible universes in the ideas of God, and as only one can exist, there must be sufficient reason for God’s choice, to determine him to one rather than to another. And this reason can only be found in the fitness, or in the degrees of perfection, which these worlds contain.
Men become attached to us not by reason of the services we render them, but by reason of the services they render us.
Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge. One great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.
Appetite | Children | Curiosity | Knowledge | Reason | Time | Wisdom |
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
It is from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.