This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.
Sense |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars... I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did. I felt their completeness as whatever they had been in the world.
Bible | Body | Fear | Grief | Harmony | Sense | Soul | Spirit | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Work | World | Bible | Thought |
The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.
Deliberation | Loafing | Sense | Will | Deliberation |
We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them.
Ability | Arrogance | Behavior | Capacity | Change | Creativity | Danger | Doubt | Effort | Error | Good | Greed | Humility | Life | Life | Pride | Reverence | Sense | Will | World | Danger | Learn | Understand |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
To know all is to forgive all. No commonplace is more untrue. Behavior, whether conditioned by an individual neurosis or by society, can be understood, that is to say, one knows exactly why such and such an individual behaves as he does. But a personal action or deed is always mysterious. When we really act, precisely because it is a matter of free choice, we can never say exactly why we do this rather than that. But it is only deeds that we are required to forgive. If someone does me an injury, the question of forgiveness only arises if I am convinced (a) that the injury he did me was a free act on his part and therefore no less mysterious to him than to me, and (b) that it was me personally whom he meant to injure. He knows as well as they do why they are doing this -- they are a squad, detailed to execute a criminal. They do not know what they are doing, because it is not their business, as executioners, to know whom they are crucifying. If the person who does me an injury does not know what he is doing, then it is as ridiculous for me to talk about forgiving him as it would be for me to forgive a tile which falls on my head in a gale.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
Customer: What have you in the way of steaks? WC: (I have) nothing in the way of steaks. I can get right to them.
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
The Self, The Ego, and The Shadow operate in time and out of time. The ego operates almost exclusively in time. The Ego is the chief organ of Temporal Awareness.
Ability | Age | Enjoyment | Experience | Individual | Inspiration | Life | Life | Model | Mystery | People | Rest | Sense | Unique | Will | Work | Old |
W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
How is the human race going to survive now that the cost of living has gone up two dollars a quart?
Sense |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
If we are to appreciate the inner dynamics we don't need to change them or judge them. There is wisdom in each of the dynamics observed. To determine what you think should happen is placing the ego in charge of the show. When the deep beingness seeks a change you will know it. Otherwise the wisdom is to put oneself in accord with the Mystery. This is hard for anyone with degrees of control issues.
Challenge | Ego | Extreme | Mystery | Need | Phenomena | Power | Sense | Success | Time | Loss | Value |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
The supposedly solid human body turns out to be an intricate interweaving of energy fields; where disease is not an entity but rather a fixated warp of energy fields; where the experience of Unconditional Love transcends the limitations of personal love; where mortality itself dies-and becomes immortality-and where I accept the Divine nature of all life forms, simultaneously physical and nonphysical, structured and non-structured, existing and not existing in any particular form at any given moment.
Balance | Ego | Intention | Nothing | Reflection | Relationship | Self | Sense | Will |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold.
Contempt | Ideals | Looks | Revelation | Self | Sense | Soul | Strength | World |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and clasical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.
Agitation | Authority | Change | Church | Conscience | Controversy | Doctrine | Enthusiasm | Force | Language | Light | Men | Method | Peace | Principles | Reason | Religion | Right | Sense | Spirit | Theology | Will |