This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The macrocosm (order of the universe), microcosm (order of the individual), and mesocosm (order of the attuned society) are equivalent, the social ideas and moral principles by which the individual is constrained to his group are conceived to be, finally, of his own nature. And for the same reason, the visionary realizations of the yogi in solitude would be of the psychological sources out of which the mesocosmic order of his mythologically grounded cultural monad originated.
Ideas | Individual | Nature | Order | Principles | Reason | Society | Solitude | Universe |
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.
The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.
Solitude |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
Loneliness | Poverty | Self | Solitude |
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
Glory | Language | Loneliness | Pain | Solitude |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Better | Distinction | Duty | Greatness | Man | Meanness | Opinion | People | Rule | Solitude | Will | World | Think |
It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred.
Character | Honor | Man | Men | Opinion | Public | Self | Solitude | World |
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves.
Business | Leisure | Men | Mother | Riches | Solitude | Thought |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, and the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone... the final desolation of solitude in the phantasmal world of imagination, shuffling memories, and desires.
Desolation | Hell | Imagination | Nothing | Solitude | World |