This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
As long as the naturalistic ontology is accepted, existence, including the existence of nature, is not determined by the meaning of life. Rather, life itself must, in order to exist, be conceived on the model of nature. That is, life must be integrated in causal chains and granted reality only inasmuch as it belongs to them.
The only part of our religion that is real is the part we express in our daily lives. Ideals that we do not act out in practice are mere abstract theories and have no real meaning. Actually, such pretended ideals are a serious detriment, because they drug the soul into a false sense of security. If you want to receive any benefit from your religion you must practice it, and the place to practice it is right here where you are, and the time to do it is now. Divine Love is the only real power. If you can realize this fact even dimly it will begin to heal and harmonize every condition in your life within a few hours. The way to realize this fact is to express it in every word you speak, in every business transaction, in every social activity, and, in fact, in every phase of your life. An early New Thought writer said: "Knead love into the bread you bake; wrap strength and courage in the parcel you tie for the woman with the weary face; hand trust and candor with the coin you pay to the man with the suspicious eyes." This is beautifully said, and it sums up the Practice of the Presence of God.
Absence | Attention | Belief | Change | Desolation | Error | God | Lesson | Means | Mind | Prayer | Thinking | Thought | Will | Words | God | Thought |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
Enter my first neighbor - a woman who spoke in complete, coherent sentences, who ate with a knife and fork and who only cried at weddings. I couldn't help myself. In a dramatic gesture, I bolted the door and threw my body across it to prevent her exit. She understood.
Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal
But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch? Jenny asked. Make me, I replied. Beg pardon? Make me, I repeated. Her eyes widened like saucers. You mean like incest? she asked. Don’t give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own. Like what, Oliver? she asked, like just what is it he makes you do? The ‘right things’, I said. What’s wrong with the ‘right things’? she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say ‘What light?’ and two more to say ‘I didn't turn it on.’
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
How much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.
Learning | Life | Life | Little | Man | Nothing | Thought | Time | Wonder | Old | Think | Thought |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
But walking down the stairs feeling each stair carefully and holding to the banister he thought, I must get her away and get her away as soon as I can without hurting her. Because I am not doing too well at this. That I can promise you. But what else can you do? Nothing, he thought. There's nothing you can do. But maybe, as you go along, you will get good at it.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe, the older waiter said. With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night. I want to go home and into bed. We are of two different kinds, the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night. I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe.
I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know ... that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?
Competence | Good | Reputation | Science | Thought | Thought |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
He thought of the Riviera, as it was then before it had all been built up, with the lovely stretches of blue sea and the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea. He remembered it as it was when he and Zelda had first found it before people went there for the summer.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
Better | Thought | Wonder | Thought | Understand |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Discipline | Honesty | Man | Necessity | Thought | Thought |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
He told me how he had first met her during the war and then lost her and won her back, and about their marriage and then about something tragic that had happened to them at St-Raphael about a year ago. This first version that he told me of Zelda and a French naval aviator falling in love was truly a sad story and I believe it was a true story. Later he told me other versions of it as though trying them for use in a novel, but none was as sad as this first one and I always believed the first one, although any of them might have been true. They were better told each time; but they never hurt you the same way the first one did.
In other words, it is not so much a question as to whether we are able to cure a patient, whether we can or not, but whether we should or not.
Ability | Character | Comfort | Consciousness | Defense | Fear | God | Ideas | Joy | Madness | Man | Meaning | Means | Men | People | Promise | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Wants | God | Thought |