This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One that goes with him; I love him for his sake, And yet I know him a notorious liar, Think him a great way fool, solely a coward. Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him That they take place when virtue's steely bones Look bleak i' th' cold wind; withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.
Praise her but for this her without-door form-- which on my faith deserves high speech--and straight the shrug, the hum or ha, these pretty brands that calumny doth use--O, I am out, that mercy does, for calumny will sear virtue itself--these shrugs, these hums and ha's, when you have said she's goodly, come between ere you can say she's honest.
Will |
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!
Dreams | Good | Little | Mind | Misfortune | Prayer | Time | Misfortune | Old |
On, on, you noble English, whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof, fathers that like so many Alexanders have in these parts from morn till even fought and sheathed their swords for lack of argument dishonor not your mothers; now attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you!
Letters are commonplace enough, yet what splendid things they are! When someone is in a distant province and one is worried about him, and then a letter suddenly arrives, one feels as though one were seeing him face to face. Again, it is a great comfort to have expressed one's feelings in a letter even though one knows it cannot yet have arrived. If letters did not exist, what dark depressions would come over one! When one has been worrying about something and wants to tell a certain person about it, what a relief it is to put it all down in a letter! Still greater is one's joy when a reply arrives. At that moment a letter really seems like an elixir of life.
Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly MahÄyÄna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly HÄ«nayÄna. These are temples where only the HÄ«nayÄna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the MahÄyÄna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [HÄ«nayÄna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna] practices are carried out.
Man | Object | People | Thought | Time | Waiting | Wrong | Child | Thought |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.
The worst effect of sin is within, and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.
Consciousness | Defeat | Faith | Hope |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
The illness I suffer from is serious and persistent and my life may be over any day. Whenever I think about you, I become sad and depressed. In my leisure time I have written Precepts for My Daughters in seven chapters. My daughters, each of you make yourself a copy; perhaps it will be of some use and benefit to you. Do your very best once you have left home!
Birth | Day | Duty | Esteem | Labor | Play | Practice | Regard | Worship |
To know means to record in one's memory; but to understand means to blend with the thing and to assimilate it oneself.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
A living dog's better than a dead lion.
Little |
Patience is not to clench your teeth and do nothing. It means to be prescient enough to trust the end result of the process. What is patience? It means looking at the thorns and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so myopic as to see the result. Whoever loves God remains patient, because he knows that it takes time incomplete moon to be full.
Enough | God | Impatience | Means | Patience | Time | Trust | God |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.
Consciousness | Nothing |
Perhaps it took a stranger to make a woman like her speak her mind.
According to Audre Lorde in all of us, whether we are parents or not, there is a black op mother. Men also carry a quality that, although too often prefer not to reach for it. Black mother at Lord's metaphor of the voice of intuition, creativity and passion unencumbered by anything. The white fathers told us: I think, then I exist and Black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel so I can be free.
ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged. JULIET: Then have my lips the sin that they have took. ROMEO: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again. Juliet: You kiss by the book.
Little |
She has a housewife's hand; but that's no matter: I say she never did invent this letter; This is a man's invention and his hand. As You Like It (Rosalind at IV, iii)