This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, the rushing amorous contact high in space together, the clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, in tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
Will |
The new righteousness offered in the gospel occurs in a world where people like us are angry enough to kill. People who are angry enough to kill do come to church, do approach God, do bring an offering.
History | Individual | Language |
Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
For although its productions are painted poems, they belong to a sort of poetry which tells itself without an articulated story.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
This age is the age of victory over the tyranny of matter greater than the world has ever known before. Our present CONCERN over becoming materialistic is something, after all, not only new but long overdue, and in this sense a real spiritual achievement of the twentieth century. In a similar way, this age, so often denounced as impersonal, has paid more explicit attention to the person than any other age in history. The philosophic movement known as personalism is a distinctive twentieth century movement.
I dwell apart by the River Qi, where the Eastern wilds stretch far without hills. The sun darkens beyond the mulberry trees; the river glistens through the villages. Shepherd boys depart, gazing back to their hamlets; hunting dogs return following their men. When a man's at peace, what business does he have? I shut fast my rustic door throughout the day.
Meditation | Practice |
The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to pervert your intellect.
Blush |
A critic is never too severe when he only detects the faults of an author. But he is worse than too severe when, in consequence of this detection, be presumes to place himself on a level with genius.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential situation, which always engages the body. Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable. In oral verbalization, particularly public verbalization, absolute motionlessness is itself a powerful gesture.
Imagination | Sound | Words | World | Writing |
Fine apricot cut for roof-beam. Fragrant cogon-grass tie for eaves. Not know ridgepole in cloud. Go make people among rain. Fine apricot was cut for the roof-beam, fragrant cogon-grass tied for the eaves. I know not when the cloud from this house will go to make rain among the people.
The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied nature intently, and discover an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which in other countries she lavishes in wild solitudes are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.
Affliction | Agony | Consolation | Duty | Error | Friend | Grief | Love | Meditation | Mother | Present | Sadness | Sorrow | Child |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
There is always something beautiful to be experienced wherever you are. Right now, look around you and select beauty as your focus.
As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
Cause | Nothing | Statistics |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Bring out the coffin, let the mourning cry. Let the planes flying in circles high in the sky the message Scratching : He Is Dead, Put beige neck ties of white pigeons from the ground, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday inert, My noon, my midnight, my song, my speech, I thought love was forever: I was wrong. 's stars are not necessary: ??remove each one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun do; Empty Ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can in some good cause.
The sense of it may come with watching a flock of cedar waxwings eating wild grapes in the top of the woods on a November afternoon. Everything they do is leisurely. They pick the grapes with a curious deliberation comb their feathers, converse in high windy whistles. Now and then one will fly out and back in a sort of dancing flight full of whimsical flutters and turns. They are like farmers loafing in their own fields on Sunday. Though they have no Sundays, their days are full of Sabbaths.
Quiet |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, and do not listen to those critics ever whose crude provincial gullets crave in books plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
Good | Platitudes | Words |