This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Nothing in nature is isolated. Nothing is without reference to something else. Nothing achieves meaning apart from that which neighbors it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The root of the guilt problem lies in human nature itself, in our failure as human being to live in accordance with our potentialities and our vision of the good." - J. Glenn Gray
"We have become so preoccupied with power and control over nature that we have lost an important dimension of our being, the disposition of thankfulness, of commemoration, of perceiving and enjoying something for its own sake. Instead of viewing these immediate objects of our environment in terms of their own being, we have come to regard them solely in terms of what they are for us. And to such an exploitative mentality, nature’s own voice becomes mute. Approached as material merely, to be worked up and pressed into the service of a self-styled lord of creation, she contains no revelation and no blessing." - J. Glenn Gray
"To understand the mysteries of life and to appreciate the grandeur of our existence, we need to look way beyond our every day reality. If we can be expansive and think about the creation of our Souls and the nature of the universe, and consider why God made us and how we can accomplish our “mission,” then we can put this lifetime into a broader spiritual perspective." - Tom Gregory
"Our whole universe is a universe of perceived phenomena in which all that is perceived embodies part of what is ourselves. A person and all his perceived world, thought, motives, and acts, are active manifestations of personality… personality represents a constant struggle to realize itself. This is why for personality there is always a now’ entering into the meaning of the past and the nature of the future." -
"If one starts out to dominate the natural world, one cannot stop short at that reputedly “rational animal” who, however rational, is also animal - and by all accounts creation’s most problematic animal. “Man against nature” becomes “man against humanity” in this sense too, that it contains the obvious directive that what is “natural” within the human species must be brought under control." - John Douglas Hall
"Nothing in nature needs to do anything; all merely appears to be becoming that which it is. There is no doer of actions; the actions are the doer. One sees potentiality actualizing. In duality, there is a `this’ (me) that is imagined to be the `cause’ of `that’ (action). In Reality, the action and self are one and the same. There is no thinker separate from the thoughts. It is the thoughts themselves that are the only thinker of the moment; they are not different or separate." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"The Cosmos (Nature, Universe) is the highest unity that we know… The Cosmos… is creative. This does not mean making something from nothing, but rather making the new out of the old… Since the Cosmos is the highest unity and is creative, we call it God. God and the Cosmos are one." - John H. Hershey
"Faith is sensitiveness to what transcends nature, knowledge and will, awareness of the ultimate, alertness to the holy dimension of all reality. Faith is a force in man, lying deeper than the stratum of reason and its nature cannot be defined in abstract, static terms. To have faith is not to infer the beyond from the wretched here, but to perceive the wonder that is here and to be stirred by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. It is not a deduction but an intuition, not a form of knowledge, of being convinced without proof, but the attitude of mind toward ideas whose scope is wider than its own capacity to grasp." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the Grandeur is God." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"There is nothing so evil, savage, and cruel in nature as the normal man." - Herman Hesse
"The meaning for us of our human life depends upon what we believe to be the nature of the universe in which we find ourselves" - John Hick, fully John Harwood Hick
"Nature is the harmless and kind beloved of those who have been disillusioned by other beloveds." - Mohammad Ḥejāzi, Moḥammad Moṭiʿ-Al-Dawla
"With nature’s help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life sustaining. Everything in nature, the sum total of heaven and earth, becomes a temple and an altar for the service of God." - Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine NULL
"Living entails (and is inseparable from) exploiting the environment for resources. Exploiting therefore, at its roots, is constructive. Indeed, the exploitive ability of the creative has improved the quality of life for billions. We should never fear our exploitive nature, but we must manage its excesses." - David Hockey
"It is love alone by which responsive love is awakened, or on account of which love is felt in return. Ultimately therefore, it is the love of God for man, and that alone, which redeems the man; because that love alone calls forth in return that love of man for God, by which the man’s whole nature is transformed. But to be efficacious in that man, it must be appropriated by man, that is, believed in and reciprocated by conscious acts of will." - Shadworth Hodgson, fully Shadworth Hollway Hodgson
"Love is the great subduing, transforming, and harmonizing emotion in human nature. And it is love alone by which responsive love is awakened, or on account of which love is felt in return. Ultimately therefore, it is the love of God for man, and that alone, which redeems the man; because that love alone calls forth in return that love of man for God, by which man’s whole nature is transformed." - Shadworth Hodgson, fully Shadworth Hollway Hodgson
"Men of all social stations live together: they are equal in their desires, yet vary in their methods; they are equal in their passions, yet different in their intelligence; that is their nature-given vitality." - Hsun-Tzu NULL
"Every occupation, of whatever nature is more efficiently performed if pursued for its own sake alone, rather than for the results to which it leads." - Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
"Belief consists not in the nature and order of our ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in their feeling to the mind... something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination." - David Hume
"Biology… has thus revealed man’s place in nature. Hs is the highest form of life produced by the evolutionary process on this planet, the latest dominant type, and the only organism capable of further advance or progress. Whether he knows it or not, whether he wishes it or not, he is now the main agency for the further evolution of the earth and its inhabitants. In other words, his destiny is to realize new possibilities for the whole terrestrial sector of the cosmic process, to be the instrument of further evolutionary progress on this planet." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself… not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps trans-humanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature… I believe in trans-humanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"The lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era... Instead of worshipping supernatural rulers, it will sanctify the higher manifestations of human nature, in art and love, in intellectual comprehension and aspiring adoration, and will emphasize the fuller realization of life’s possibilities as a sacred trust." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"I too think that time and space are concepts created by the human mind and that if we attempt to find out what their true natures are, we are compelled to return to the nature of the greater life force." - Daisaku Ikeda and Arnold Toynbee
"The belief in progress, not as an ideal but as an indisputable fact, not as a task for humanity but as a law of Nature, has been the working faith of the West for about a hundred and fifty years." - William Ralph Inge
"Society is like a lawn where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface. He, however, who would study nature in its wilderness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice." - Washington Irving
"A mystic is not one who sees God in nature, but one for whom God and nature fit into one plane." - Bede Jarrett
"The essential truth... is that man is under absolute mandate to express divinity in his own life and his whole nature." - F. Ernest Johnson
"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom and knowledge, and this is God." - Julian of Norwich NULL
"The artist's imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn't it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth." - Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
"It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else… Nothing has a more diverse and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess – hidden." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"Security is almost an illusion (or superstition). It does not exist in nature, nor does humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together." - Vista M. Kelly
"Like all evolution in nature, the slow evolution of society is followed from time to time by periods of accelerated evolution which are called revolutions." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
"I believe the purpose of life is happiness. In today’s world being happy is inseparable from being responsible. We need to temper the extremes of our personal nature so that we can realize oneness with the universe. We must keep our destructive qualities from outweighing our constructive qualities." - Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL
"All things in nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfill their function and make no claim. All things alike do their work, and then we see them subside. When they have reached their bloom, each returns to its origin… This reversion is an eternal law. To know that law is wisdom." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Creating without possessing, acting without expecting, guiding without interfering. That is why love of the Tao is in the very nature of things." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"This is the nature of the unenlightened mind: the sense organs, which are limited in scope and ability, randomly gather information. This partial information is arranged into judgments, which are based on previous judgments, which are usually based on someone’s else’s foolish ideas. These false concepts and ideas are then stored in a highly selective memory system. Distortion upon distortion: the mental energy flows constantly through contorted and inappropriate channels, and the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"To eliminate the vexation of the mind, it doesn’t help to do something; this only reinforces the mind’s mechanics. Dissolving the mind is instead a matter of not-doing: simply avoid becoming attached to what you see and think. Relinquish the notion that you are separated from the all-knowing mind of the universe. then you can recover the original pure insight and see through all illusions. Knowing nothing, you will be aware of everything. Remember: because clarity and enlightenment are within your own nature, they are regained without moving an inch." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Crystals are like concentrated knowledge pressed into crystalline form. They are the culmination of life force coming together in time and space. The crystal shows nature’s urge for symmetry and perfection. Our life purpose is like that – purposeful curiosity and imagination yearning for balance and beauty." - Glenn W. Lehrer
"We feel God present in nature, whether in its awe or its beauty; and in human history, whether in its justice or its weird mysteriousness; and in the life of a good man, or the circumstances of a generous or noble act. Most of all we feel Him near when conscience, His inward messenger, speaks plainly and decisively to us." -