This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I don’t see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, I.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception, which induces us to build up physical theories and to expect that future sense perceptions will agree with them and, moreover, to believe that a question not decidable now has meaning and may be decided in the future.
Confidence | Future | Intuition | Meaning | Perception | Question | Reason | Sense | Theories | Will | Wisdom |
Duty is carrying on promptly and faithfully the affairs now before you. It is to fulfill the claims of to-day.
All the wonderful things in life are so simple that one is not aware of their wonder until they are beyond touch. Never have I felt the wonder and beauty and joy of life so keenly as now in my grief that Johnny is not here to enjoy them.
Beauty | Grief | Joy | Life | Life | Wisdom | Wonder | Beauty |
He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him.
Andrew Hamilton, fully Andrew Jackson Hamilton
Power may justly be compared to a great river; while kept within its bounds it is both beautiful and useful, but when it overflows its banks, it brings destruction and desolation to all in its way.
Desolation | Power | Wisdom |
In the pioneer days of our history it was easy to love one's neighbor and respect his rights, when possibly the neighbor lived at a distance of four or five miles and the relations were not intimate enough to occasion a clash of interests. Now one finds that society rather than another individual is his neighbor.
Enough | History | Individual | Love | Respect | Rights | Society | Wisdom | Society | Respect |
‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter... In short, a passion must be accompany’d with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then ‘tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment.
Good | Judgment | Little | Order | Passion | Reason | Wisdom | World |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
The answer to the accumulating casualties of the welfare state’s “war” on poverty is the home-grown, grass-roots, all-volunteer army of ordinary people armed with food, books, skills and a determination to make a difference. The entrepreneurial creativity that catapulted this nation to a position of global leadership can now be harnessed to do for community what it did for productivity. When we provide imaginative, entrepreneurial alternatives to the welfare state, we won’t need to confront it. It will simply wither away. And the rewards of this work are a bounty of spiritual renewal: an abundance of love, meaning and connectedness.
Abundance | Books | Creativity | Determination | Global | Love | Meaning | Need | People | Position | Poverty | War | Will | Wisdom | Work | Leadership |
It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dullness to maturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.
Chance | Genius | Glory | Nature | Struggle | Will | Wisdom |
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
Merely to seek greater ease and comfort... through the destruction of the eternal code set up for all ages by the God of Eternity, is not and never can be Reform. Judaism seeks to lift us to its height, how dare we attempt to drag it down to our level?
Comfort | Eternal | Eternity | God | Reform | Wisdom | God |
Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL
We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift.
Awe | Children | Greatness | Men | Sense | Soul | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder |
'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
No time exists other than now... So now is all you have and all you ever will have... Why not begin doing the best you can right where you are?... Trust the process of growth. Trust God. Pay attention to the details of your life, doing your very best with each challenge that presents itself... The past is the raw material of the present, but the past is not a blueprint for the present... Begin where you are. Do what you can. Even a small effort to change, to grow, to improve, will bring astonishing results... You can choose to build on what you were, but you are not what you were. You can focus on what you will be, but you are not what you will be. What you are is what you are right now - the inheritor of all of God’s gifts.
Attention | Challenge | Change | Effort | Focus | God | Growth | Life | Life | Past | Present | Right | Time | Trust | Will | Wisdom |
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. Now put foundations under them.