This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
I just think that dreams are best, Just to sit and fancy things; Give your gold no acid test, Try not how your silver rings; Fancy women pure and good, Fancy men upright and true: Fortressed in your solitude, Let Life be a dream to you. For I think that Thought is all; Truth's a minion of the mind; Love's ideal comes at call; As ye seek so shall ye find. But ye must not seek too far; Things are never what they seem: Let a star be just a star, And a woman -- just a dream. O you Dreamers, proud and pure, You have gleaned the sweet of life! Golden truths that shall endure Over pain and doubt and strife. I would rather be a fool Living in my Paradise, Than the leader of a school, Sadly sane and weary wise. O you Cynics with your sneers, Fallen brains and hearts of brass, Tweak me by my foolish ears, Write me down a simple ass! I'll believe the real "you" Is the "you" without a taint; I'll believe each woman too, But a slightly damaged saint. Yes, I'll smoke my cigarette, Vestured in my garb of dreams, And I'll borrow no regret; All is gold that golden gleams. So I'll charm my solitude With the faith that Life is blest, Brave and noble, bright and good,
Doubt | Dreams | Faith | Gold | Life | Life | Men | Pain | Thought | Woman | Leader | Think | Thought | Truths |
Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli
Mercury has cast aside The signs of intellectual pride, Freely offers thee the soul: Art thou noble to receive? Canst thou give or take the whole, Nobly promise and believe? Then thou wholly human art, A spotless, radiant, ruby heart, And the golden chain of love Has bound thee to the realm above. Guard thee from the power of evil; Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.
Beauty | Culture | Friend | Life | Life | Light | Prison | Simplicity | Spirit | Wealth | Beauty |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking in a field at dawn. You are yourself the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt. You're in your body like a plant is solid in the ground, yet you're wind. You're the diver's clothes lying empty on the beach. You're the fish. In the ocean are many bright strands and many dark strands like veins that are seen when a wing is lifted up. Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins that are lute strings that make ocean music, not the sad sound of surf, but the sound of no shore.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Hope has two beautiful daughters - their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
Desire | Error | Evil | Heart | Law | Pity | Poverty | Shame | Sin | Will |
Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL
The bliss of the elect in heaven would not be perfect unless they were able to look across the abyss and enjoy the agonies of their brethren in eternal fire.
A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.
God has been very good to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards. If I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves.
Action | Error | Life | Life | Mankind | Principles | Time |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Genetically the asocial nature of the neurosis springs from its original tendency to flee from a dissatisfying reality to a more pleasurable world of phantasy. This real world which neurotics shun is dominated by the society of human beings and by the institutions created by them; the estrangement from reality is at the same time a withdrawal from human companionship.
Error |
Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.
Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
A great many wise sayings have been uttered about the effects of solitary retirement; but the motives which impel men to seek it are not more various than the effects which it produces on different individuals. One thing is certain, that those who can with truth affirm that they are never less alone than when alone, might generally add that they never feel more lonely than when not alone.
Error | Feelings | Human nature | Judgment | Nature | Time |
Archibald Geikie, fully Sir Archibald Geikie
If all history is only an amplification of biography, the history of science may be most instructively read in the life and work of the men by whom the realms of Nature have been successively won.
Antiquity | Argument | Error | Eternity | Evidence | Evolution | Lord | Past | Time |
Archibald Geikie, fully Sir Archibald Geikie
Geologists have not been slow to admit that they were in error in assuming that they had an eternity of past time for the evolution of the earth's history. They have frankly acknowledged the validity of the physical arguments which go to place more or less definite limits to the antiquity of the earth. They were, on the whole, disposed to acquiesce in the allowance of 100 millions of years granted to them by Lord Kelvin, for the transaction of the whole of the long cycles of geological history. But the physicists have been insatiable and inexorable. As remorseless as Lear's daughters, they have cut down their grant of years by successive slices, until some of them have brought the number to something less than ten millions. In vain have the geologists protested that there must somewhere be a flaw in a line of argument which tends to results so entirely at variance with the strong evidence for a higher antiquity, furnished not only by the geological record, but by the existing races of plants and animals. They have insisted that this evidence is not mere theory or imagination, but is drawn from a multitude of facts which become hopelessly unintelligible unless sufficient time is admitted for the evolution of geological history. They have not been able to disapprove the arguments of the physicists, but they have contended that the physicists have simply ignored the geological arguments as of no account in the discussion.
History | Occupation | Problems | Training |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
To show your true ability is always, in a sense, to surpass the limits of your ability, to go a little beyond them: to dare, to seek, to invent; it is at such a moment that new talents are revealed, discovered, and realized.
Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
They tell us that Pity is akin to Love; if so, Pity must be a poor relation.
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
My dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.