This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Man learns to see providence in the great universal forces of nature, in the wind and the rain, in the soil underfoot and in the cloud overhead.
Man | Nature | Providence |
Shall I say: Creator, Sustainer, Pardoner, Near One, Distant One, Incomprehensible One, God both of flowers and stars, God of the gentle wind and of terrible battles, Wisdom, Power, Loyalty and Truthfulness, Eternity and Infinity, you the All-Merciful, you the Just One, you Love itself?
Eternity | God | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Power | Wisdom | God |
Michael Toms and Justine Willis Toms
The idea that work is "over here" and spiritual life is "over there" prevents us from engaging life to the fullest. We imagine that we are marking time at work and that life begins when we arrive home in the evening or on the weekends. The result is that work is not fully integrated into our days, and we wind up living at the margins of our lives.
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it – but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
The mind by passion driven from its firm hold, becomes a feather to each wind that blows.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.
Gossip … has caused infinitely more sorrow in life than murder. It is drunkenness of the tongue; it is assassination of reputations. It runs the cowardly gamut from mere ignorant, impertinent intrusion into the lives of others to malicious slander ... He who listens to this crime of respectability without protest is as evil as he who speaks. One strong, manly voice of protest, of appeal to justice, of calling halt in the name of charity—could fumigate a room from gossip as a clear, sharp winter wind kills a pestilence.
Crime | Evil | Life | Life | Protest | Slander | Sorrow | Slander | Gossip |
You feel you are hedged in; you dream of escape; but beware of mirages. Do not run or fly away in order to get free: rather dig in the narrow place which has been given you; you will find God there and everything. God does not float on your horizon, he sleeps in your substance. Vanity runs, love digs. If you fly away from yourself, your prison will run with you and will close in because of the wind of your flight; if you go deep down into yourself it will disappear in paradise
The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.
Appetite | Art | Despair | Land | Light | Qualities | Work | Obtuse | Loss | Art |
Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them. I have but to touch the wind to know these things.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor.
"A family without government," says Matthew Henry, "is like a house without a roof, exposed to every wind that blows." He might better have said, like a house in flames, a scene of confusion, and commonly too hot to live in.
Truth can come to you only when your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart, not if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. When there is love in your heart, you do not talk about organizing for brotherhood, you do not talk about belief, you do not talk about division or the powers that create division, you need not seek reconciliation. Then you are a simple human being without a label, without a country. This means that you must strip yourself of all those things and allow truth to come into being, and it can come only when the mind is empty, when the mind ceases to create. Then it will come without your invitation. Then it will come as swiftly as the wind and unbeknown. It comes obscurely, not when you are watching, wanting. It is there as sudden as sunlight, as pure as the night, but to receive it, the heart must be full and the mind empty.
Heart | Love | Means | Mind | Need | Receive | Truth | Will |
John Carmack, fully John D. Carmack II
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world… I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the treetops has always been good music to me, and the face of the fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men. I am in love with this world...I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
Beauty | Fury | Good | Joy | Love | Mind | Music | Oppression | Sound | Wonder | Beauty |