This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Religion is proposed not as a transcendent revelation of the nature of man and the world, but as a means of weathering the storms of life, or of deepening one’s spiritual existence, or of preserving the social order, or of warding off anxiety." - Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman
"How can we be so willfully blind as to look for causes in nature when nature herself is an effect?" - Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
"We are bound together by a more primitive and fundamental unity than any unity of thought and doctrine; we all have the same human nature and, considered in their extra-mental reality, the same primordial tendencies." - Jacques Maritain
"Segregation in the church violates something that is basic in the nature of the church. How can a church exclude from “the church of God” those who are children of God? How can it, as “the body of Christ,” withhold the privilege of worship from those who have been brought into union with Christ." - T. B. Maston, fully Thomas Buford Maston
"Love is the creative power of the universe that manifests as strength and beauty. To love is to know God and the inmost nature of the ultimate Reality… Love is letting go of fear and worry… Love consecrates life… By letting go of separateness we see love as the reflection of our own self and harmony in the inconsistencies and imperfections of the existence and explore joy in the midst of the pains and problems of life." - Bibhuti Mazumder
"The degradation of our society today stems mainly from the lack of awareness of what is within us. Being ignorant of our true nature, we seek external solutions to the problems rooted within. In our search for security and prosperity we have abandoned ourselves and are constantly drifting away from human values and virtues." - Bibhuti Mazumder
"The mind, by its very nature, persistently tries to live forever, resisting age and attempting to give itself a form... When a person passes his prime and his life begins to lose true vigor and charm, his mind starts functioning as if it were another form of life; it imitates what life does, eventually doing what life cannot do." - Yukio Mishima
"In nature nothing creates itself an nothing destroys itself." - Maria Montessori
"Thoughts held in mind reproduce after their kind. It’s the nature of thinking. What we hold in our mind reproduces itself in the reality of our life and our experience." - Mary Manin Morrissey
"Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?" - Wayne Muller
"The Law of Attraction attracts to you everything you need, according to the nature of your thought life. Your environment and financial condition are the perfect reflection of your habitual thinking. Thought rules the world." - Joseph Murphy
"The mission of art is to achieve a deeper understanding of nature’s beauty. The mission, to put it another way, is to observe nature with an artistic mind, a mind bent on discovering beauty. Therefore, the kind of nature that the average person sees does not make art when it is reproduced." - Shiga Naoya
"Hope is nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness." - Alfred Nobel, fully Alfred Bernhard Nobel
"Advance in understanding of nature or even in control of nature does not diminish God. God is not the sum total of what man does not know about nature or what man cannot control in nature." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"By “nationalism” I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled “good” or “bad.” But secondly… I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism… By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality." -
"The nature of the numinous can only be suggested by means of the special way in which it is reflected in the mind in terms of feeling… We are dealing with something for which there is only one appropriate expression, mysterium tremendum." - Rudolf Otto
"The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civic Virtue... it is a Weakness in Religion and Government where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since... Liberty is always the Price of it." - William Penn
"Nature composes some of its loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope." - Theodore Roszak
"All men cannot be poets or philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic and god-like work the progress of creation. Whoever improves their own nature improves the universe of which they are a part." - Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
"We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement." - Rosemary Radford Ruether
"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art." - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
"It is only the idea of a divine presence hidden within the rational order of nature which is compatible with our scientific view of nature and in accord with our sense of the ineffable." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The Bible is primarily not man’s vision of God but God’s vision of man. The Bible is not man’s theology but God’s anthropology, dealing with man and what He asks of him rather than with the nature of God. God did not reveal to the prophets eternal mysteries but His knowledge and love of man. It was not the aspiration of Israel to know the Absolute but to ascertain what He asks of man; to commune with His will rather than with His essence." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The idea of creation expresses the conviction that neither blind chance nor an impersonal mechanical order is behind the existence of the universe. Behind the orderly processes of nature stands the primordial act of God’s concern. There are processes because there was an event of creation." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"Man is by nature good… Men are depraved and perverted by society." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"The fundamental principle of all morality is that man is a being naturally good, loving justice and order; that there is not any original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Financial markets are driven by human nature and have a propensity to go to excess. This means that periodic financial crises of one sort or another are virtually inevitable." - Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
"Jainism describes a world without a creator God in which human beings’ true nature as “energy, consciousness, and bliss” has been tarnished by karma. The free movement of life force toward its fulfillment in purity as the supreme value, upheld by an ethic of radical non-violence (ahimsa), characterized by a respect for the life force of all beings and a recognition of the fundamental interconnectedness of all… ignore this truth about interconnectedness endangers ourselves and the planet, whether we subscribe to the Jain worldview or not." - Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
"The Buddha, that is now “Awakened One,” diagnosed the human condition in the following way. Life is out of balance and characterized by suffering because all things are impermanent, and yet we desire things as if they were permanent. We each view our own self as if it too were permanent and completely independent from our selves, and so we think of our self as competing for those things with other discrete selves. Everything that we desire will ultimately pass away – we cannot hold on to anything in the end, not even our own bodies and minds – so our inappropriate desires are frustrated and we suffer, only to be reborn again into anew life of desire and suffering. To break the cycle of rebirth (samsara), we must overcome our ignorance about the true nature of things, cut the root of desire, and give up attachment to self, for we are anatman, no-self." - Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
"The Taoist solution was to get oneself in harmony with the Way or Tao of the universe, to learn to move through the world with flexibility and fluidity according to the nature of things, rather than fighting it, ourselves, or other people." - Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
"Hatred is entrenched in human nature. It is as old as man, as old as man’s desire to expunge it. It slumbers in all of us. It can awaken at any time. I am not sure if we can eradicate hate from our hearts, but of this I am certain: It must always be our goal." - Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov
"The world's history is constant, like the laws of nature, and simple, like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results." - Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
"Nature is perfect, wherever we look, but man always deforms it." - Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
"True art is the intermediary between man’s ordinary nature and his higher potentialities." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Within the limits of the physical laws of nature, we are still masters of our individual and collective destiny, for good or ill." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Knowledge only saves us on condition that it engages all that we are: only when it constitutes a way which works and transforms, and which wounds our nature as the plough wounds the soil." - Fritjhof Schuon
"The nature of the living Being without me I can understand only through the living Being which is within me." - Albert Schweitzer
"For what else is Nature but God and the Divine Reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
"Nature’s needs are easily provided and ready to hand. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
"Time, Nature’s great healer." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
"Men are free to work out their purposes, and, at the same time, there is a divine purpose in the world which human history fulfills and to which the environment of nature is subordinate. Here God and man meet." - William Ritchie Sorley