This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant according to the law! Oh, God! give me poverty! Shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them with all thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of authority! Suffer me at least to call life, the pursuits of life, my own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of the beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of monopolists and kings!
Danger | Firmness | Man | Nature | Opposition | Speech | Will | Danger | Circumstance | Truths |
You may try to support your family and friends, but at the time of death all other actions besides the virtuous practices of Dharma activities will have been pointless. So constantly apply yourself to spiritual practices in thought, word, and deed!
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Among these, the mind (manas) is both an organ of sensation and of action. It is deliberative and it is an organ cognate with the rest. They are multifarious due to the specific modifications of the gunas, and so are the external diversities.
When crossing a river in bright moonlight, I love to see the water scatter in showers of crystal under the oxen's feet.
ROSENCRANTZ: I understand you not, my lord. HAMLET: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing — GUILDENSTERN: A thing, my lord? HAMLET: Of nothing.
Service | Speech | Understand |
ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing. GUILDENSTERN: A thing my lord? HAMLET: Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!
Body | Speech | Understand |
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 |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Even though I overthrew twenty times, that does not make it less beautiful or less ugly to me... - A good heart helps to have a beautiful face, my boy, even if the person is monstrous. Did you know that a heart is hardened able to make the most beautiful person in a real monster.
Speech |
What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!
Democracy | Free press | Free speech | Opinion | Safe | Speech | War | World |
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.
I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.
Character | Good | Pleasure | Speech | Thought | World | Think | Thought |
You seem disappointed that I am not more responsive to your interest in spiritual direction. Actually, I am more than a little ambivalent about the term, particularly in the ways it is being used so loosely without any sense of knowledge of the church's traditions in these matters.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.
Prayer in the hour of need is a great boon. From simple trials to our Gethsemanes, prayer can put us in touch with God, our greatest source of comfort and counsel.
Belief | Dignity | Eternal | Fear | Free speech | God | Government | Life | Life | Right | Rights | Speech | Work | World | Worship | Government | Trial | God |