This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Let the numerous isles rejoice with trembling, For He is high and exalted and acknowledged as One In the height of the firmament. The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice. The clouds acclaim Thee beyond every other power, In every mouth is thy unity uttered, And by the people of God is Thy praise proclaimed. And who is like to Thy people Israel, The one nation on earth, To give thanks to Thee upstanding, O God inhabiting the heights, And to proclaim Thee as One? The Lord reigneth, let the nations quake. He sitteth among the Cherubim, let the earth tremble. The scattered shalt Thou assemble and the sighing redeem, To Thy holy house Thou shalt lead them with rejoicing, And from earth’s four corners gather the exiles.
Beauty | Deeds | Evil | Forgiveness | Inheritance | Lord | Repentance | Right | Will | Forgiveness | Deeds | Beauty |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
TO MY SOUL - Be wise, my precious soul, and haste To bow to God in reverence. Let vanities no more be chased, Bethink thee ere this world lies waste, The world that waits thee going hence. Thy life to God’s life is akin, Concealed like His beneath a veil, Since He is free of flaw or sin, Like purity thou too canst win, To reach perfection wherefore fail? And as His arm upholds the sky, Do thou thy dumb brute body lift, Thou, soul, to which we can descry No like on earth—O magnify The God of whom thou art the gift. Greet then, my soul, thy Rock with praise, Hail him, my inmost heart, with song Unceasingly throughout my days, And let all souls their voices raise My benediction to prolong.
Rose-Morals - I. -- Red. Would that my songs might be What roses make by day and night -- Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight. Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast As yon red rose, and dare the day, All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest? Say yea -- say yea! Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, I strive, I pray. II. -- White. Soul, get thee to the heart Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -- There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer. Of spirit grave yet light, How fervent fragrances uprise Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities! Mulched with unsavory death, Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, thy fate.
Battle | Blasphemy | Contemplation | Day | Death | Dreams | Hate | Law | Life | Life | Little | Love | Need | Rage | Riches | Right | Self | Sense | Silence | Smile | Soul | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Terror | Time | Wrong | Riches | Contemplation | Old |
Sail fast, sail fast, Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past, Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams; Sail fast, sail fast. Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea With news about the Future scent the sea: My brain is beating like the heart of Haste: I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste; Go, trembling song, And stay not long; oh, stay not long: Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove, But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
In this mob of I's inside, which one is me? Hear me out. I know I'm wandering, but don't start putting a lid on this racket. No telling what I'll do then. Every moment I'm thrown by your story. One moment it's happy, and I'm singing. One moment it's sad, and I'm weeping. It turns bitter, and I pull away. But then you spill a little grace, and just like that, I'm all light. It's not so bad, this arrangement, actually.
Religion directs man to God not as its object but as its end.
Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.
Counsel | Doubt | Men | Need | Wisdom | Wise | Words | Counsel |
Isidore of Seville, fully Saint Isidore of Seville NULL
It is agreed that all sound which is the material of music is of three sorts. First is harmonica, which consists of vocal music; second is organica, which is formed from the breath; third is rhythmica, which receives its numbers from the beat of the fingers. For sound is produced either by the voice, coming through the throat; or by the breath, coming through the trumpet or tibia, for example; or by touch, as in the case of the cithara or anything else that gives a tuneful sound on being struck.
Guidance | Harmony | Music | Nothing | Universe | Guidance |
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
To impress the truth upon a soul when it is still fresh, like wax not yet subjected to the seal, is an easier task than inscribing pious doctrine on top of inscriptions—I mean wrong doctrines and dogmas—with the result that the former are confused and thrown into disorder by the latter.
Beauty | Distinguish | God | Greatness | Respect | Thinking | Respect | Beauty | God | Think |
There is more of belief than reason in the world. All instructors and masters in sciences and arts require, first a belief in their disciples, and a resignation of their understanding and wills to them. And it is the wisdom of God to require that of man which his own reason makes him submit to another which is his fellow-creature. He, therefore, that quarrels with the condition of faith, must quarrel with all the world, since belief is the beginning of all knowledge; yea, and most of the knowledge in the world may rather come under the title of belief than of knowledge; for what we think we know this day we may find from others such arguments as may stagger our knowledge, and make us doubt of that we thought ourselves certain of before: nay, sometimes we change our opinions ourselves without any instructor, and see a reason to entertain an opinion quite contrary to what we had before. And if we found a general judgment of others to vote against what we think we know, it would make us give the less credit to ourselves and our own sentiments. All knowledge in the world is only a belief depending upon the testimony or arguings of others; for, indeed, it may be said of all men as in Job (viii. 9), “We are but of yesterday, and know nothing.”
The question grows more troubling with each passing year how much of what yesterday's science fiction regarded as unspeakably dreadful has become today's award-winning research.
We might summarize our present human situation by the simple statement: that in the 20th century, the glory of the human has become the desolation of the Earth and now the desolation of the Earth is becoming the destiny of the human. From here on, the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually-enhancing human – Earth relationship. When we inquire just how this will work out with the various aspects of our human existence, we might select four major areas that have authority over the human project: the political-social order, the educational order, the economic order and the religious order. Now these four projects are all directly involved in this determination of the future. Religion has an awful lot to do with it – if they would simply begin to be more aware of the revelatory significance of the natural world. The education is such that children need to have contact with the natural life systems. Someone has written a book about the children and their need - just simply for their emotional and mental development - to have contact with the mountains, the air, the sea, the dawn, the sunset, trees, the birds, the song of the birds. Children that don’t have these experiences have no real idea of the world they live in. They live in a house, in a school, in a city that’s all manufactured. And they began to be progressively isolated from the basic dynamics of what human life is all about. So that is a very clear situation. It has been suggested that this lack of contact leads to ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ for children. So in this manner, the future of the children depends very directly on some more functional balance between the human presence and the functioning of the natural world. Economics: We need to return to some sense of the natural life systems and realize that our disturbance of the Earth and our pollution processes are having a profound contact on the economy of our world. Then we have also the political order. The political order: the most absurd thing in modern times is the idea that only humans have rights. That’s the most absurd and self-destructive thing imaginable – because every being has rights. Rights come from existence. Rights is simply the giving to every being its due. That’s a brief definition of rights. And every being – to exist – has rights, has three rights: the right to be, the right to habitat and the right to fulfill its role in the great community of existence. So in this manner a person has a very direct and immediate way of thinking about the 21st century. Because if we don’t respond to this by a better adjustment of human-Earth presence to each other then we are in difficulty.
Earth | Failure | Judgment | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Failure |
Anarchy is the choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three half-pence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.
Earth |
How, without clothes, could we possess the master organ, soul's seat and true pineal gland of the body social--I mean a purse?
Good | Man | Neutrality | Friendship |
In private prayer we have a far greater advantage as so the exercise of our own gifts and graces and parts that we have in public...in public duties we are more passive, but in private duties we are more active. Now, the more our gifts and parts and graces are exercised, the more they are strengthened and increased. All acts strengthen habits. The more sin is acted, the more it is strengthened. And so it is with our gifts and graces; the more they are acted, the more they are strengthened.
Earth | Enjoyment | Eternal | God | Happy | Imperfection | Men | Mourning | Pain | Present | Prison | Society | Weakness | Society | God |
A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax.
Earth | Man | Munificence | Principles | Science | Study | Teach | Learn |
The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day And saw that gentle figure pass By London Bridge, his frequent way-- They little knew what man he was. The pointed beard, the courteous mien, The equal port to high and low, All this they saw or might have seen-- But not the light behind the brow! The doublet's modest gray or brown, The slender sword-hilt's plain device, What sign had these for prince or clown? Few turned, or none, to scan him twice. Yet 't was the King of England's kings! The rest with all their pomps and trains Are mouldered, half-remembered things-- 'T is he alone that lives and reigns!