This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery. This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated staue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket. Prayer is a realtionship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm ainming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.
Belief | Books | Care | Decision | Destiny | Divinity | Faith | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Reason | Religion | Scripture | Will | God |
The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now.
Leisure |
You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings toward Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it; you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful beings to prefer His pleasure to our own or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love of Him can or does make us obedient to Him.
Body | Leisure | Little | Music | Recreation | Sacrifice | Soul | Will | Worth |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.
Change | Government | Right | Government |
Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
How can we disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.
Compensation | Leisure | Sacrifice | Work |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
They tell me if you see a slave sleeping do not wake him lest he dreamed of freedom and tell them if you see a slave sleeping and told him about freedom
Man |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
The real meditation is ... the meditation on one's identity. Ah, voila une chose! You try it. You try finding out why you're you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voila une chose!
Leisure |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
Man |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Do I not say truly, Gandalf,' said Aragorn at last, 'that you could go whithersoever you wished quicker than I? And this I also say: you are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads.