This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Faith is the song of life. Woe to him who wishes to rob life of its splendid poetry. The whole mass of prosaic literature and knowledge is of value only when it is founded on the perception of the poetry of life.
Faith | Knowledge | Life | Life | Literature | Perception | Poetry | Wishes | Woe | Value |
Ding Ling, pseudonym of Jiǎng Bīngzhī, aka Bīn Zhǐ
Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms.
Nicanor Parra, bully Nicanor Parra Sandoval
In poetry everything is permitted. With only one condition, of course: you must improve upon the blank page.
Poetry |
All good poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
Philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate sense which we term civilization. In each there is reference to form beyond the direct meanings of words. Poetry allies itself to metre, philosophy to mathematic pattern.
Civilization | Philosophy | Poetry | Sense | Words |
The poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen… Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
The justest division of human learning is that derived from the three different faculties of the soul, the seat of learning; history being relative to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason.
History | Imagination | Learning | Memory | Philosophy | Poetry | Reason | Soul |
Intuition represents the free life of the mind, the poetry native to it, which I am far from despising; but this is the subjective or ideal element in thought which we must discount if we are anxious to possess true knowledge.
Intuition | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mind | Poetry | Thought | Thought |
Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purpose, whether of good or of evil.
Custom | Difficulty | Energy | Evil | Good | Mind | Philosophy | Poetry | Purpose | Purpose |