This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He is only happy when he can maintain himself - mentally and spiritually - at the intersection between a vertical line and horizontal one, in a state of perfect balance. For this, he needs to know where he is located every moment, both in his relationship to the divine and to his family here on earth. If he loses that balance, he loses his power.
Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?
Cause | Happy | Observation | Quiet | Statistics | Work | World |
My guru says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it...
Friend | Music | Words | World | Understand |
So, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.
Business | Cause | Day | Death | Duty | Father | God | Greatness | Guilt | Law | Life | Life | Man | Men | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sin | Soul | Teach | Time | War | Business | God | Guilty | Think |
I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.
At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you. Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well – that would be the end of the universe. But try dropping it….Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. Life continues to go on…. Why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don’t you let it be?
Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn’t want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
Discipline | Peace | Speech | Words | World |
Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.
I told him: Maybe you could come to visit me in America someday, Ketut. Navia and shook his head cheerfully resigned to capacity: I cannot Liz, I do not have enough teeth to travel by plane
Absolution | Children | Clemency | Pain | People | Thought | Words | Friends | Thought |
I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance.
Care | History | Love | Man | Relationship | Romance | Time | Waiting | Victim |
I love my pizza so much in fact that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza almost an affair. Meanwhile Sofie is practically in tears over hers she's having a metaphysical crisis about it and she's begging me Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm
I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: I am your slave!) Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again.
Balance | Behavior | Consequences | Depression | Ends | Family | Grief | Need | Panic | People | Will |
Everyone makes their own path, and I must make mine. The Bhagavad Gita - and ancient Indian Yogic text - says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life perfectly. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly. It is mine.
Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.
Discipline | Good | Learning | Peace | Solitude | Speech | Words | World |
I think of thee!-my thoughts do twine and bud about thee, as wild vines, about a tree... Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood I will not have my thoughts instead of thee who art dearer, better!