This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Evils... can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the Gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the earthly nature and this mortal sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise.
Earth | God | Good | Heaven | Mortal | Nature | Necessity | Wise |
Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be fro the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he an be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool.
Beginning | Earth | Falsehood | Good | Happy | Heaven | Man | Truth | Blessed |
The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star, she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he.
Acceptance | Heaven |
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
The builder of heaven has not so ill constructed his creature as that the religion, that is, the public nature, should fall out: the public and the private element, like north and south, like inside and outside, like centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every soul, and cannot be subdued except the soul is dissipated. God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
God | Heart | Heaven | Nature | Public | Religion | Soul | God |
Adi Shankara, aka Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya
What is hell? To live in slavery to others. How is heaven attained? The attainment of heaven is the freedom from cravings. What is a person’s duty? To do good to all beings. What are worthless as soon as they are won? Honor and fame. What brings happiness? The friendship of the holy. What destroys craving? Realization of one’s true self. Who are our enemies? Our sense-organs, when they are uncontrolled. Who are our friends? Our sense-organs, when they are controlled. Who has overcome the world? He who has conquered his own mind.
Attainment | Duty | Fame | Freedom | Good | Heaven | Hell | Honor | Mind | Self | Sense | Slavery | World | Friendship |
Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider, nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth, for love is born of God and cannot rest except in God, Who is created above all things.
Better | Earth | God | Heaven | Love | Nothing | Rest | God |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from God and nearer to dust.
It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God’s heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.
Day | Death | Difficulty | God | Heart | Heaven | Hero | Life | Life | Man | Taste | Wrong |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this – with work which you despise, which bores you and which the world does not need – this life is hell.
Despise | Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Need | Work | World |
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words, without thoughts, never to heaven go!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Earth | Heaven | Philosophy |