This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The blind are more understanding than the deaf because hearing exerts a direct influence on the formation of moral character, which is not immediately true of what is seen. The human soul can also become diffused by way of the eye whereas what is heard results in focus and concentration.
Character | Focus | Influence | Soul | Understanding |
The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only they who keep their eye fixed on the far horizon will find their right road.
Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.
The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders - these are the masters of victory.
When drawing a face, any face, it is as if curtain after curtain, mask after mask, falls away, until a final mask remains, one that can no longer be removed, reduced. By the time the drawing is finished, I know a great deal about that face, for no face can hide itself for long. But although noting escapes the eye, all is forgiven beforehand. The eye does not judge, moralize, criticize. It accept the masks in gratitude as it does the long bamboos being long, the goldenrod being yellow.
All motion or natural action takes place in time, more or less rapidly, but still in determined moments well ascertained by nature. Even those actions which appear to take effect suddenly, and in the twinkling of an eye (as we express it), are found to admit of greater or less rapidity.
Whilst he boasteth that he can discern the least mote in the eye of another, he is not able to see the huge block that puts out the sight of both his eyes.
The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.
Axioms | Nature | Sense | Understanding |
My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worse. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.
Character | Heart | Man | Mind | Nothing | Retirement | Solitude | Tenderness | Wants |
Wisdom views with an indifferent eye all finite joys, all blessings born to die.
In the heat of speculation or of love there may come moments of equal perfection, but they are very unstable. The reason and the heart remain deeply unsatisfied. But the eye finds in nature, and in some supreme achievements of art, constant and fuller satisfaction. For the eye is quick and seems to have been more docile to the education of life than the heart or the reason of man, and able sooner to adapt itself to the reality. Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility.
Art | Beauty | Education | Evidence | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Nature | Perfection | Reality | Reason | Speculation | Beauty |