This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man.
Abundance | Body | Conversation | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Meditation | Money | Need | People | Reading | Spirit | Time | World | Think | Understand |
Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation.
What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd ended up showing off everything she'd got, and she'd puked all down one of the muslin curtains and completely ruined it. At least the men did go into the street to do it; Lorilleux and Poisson, when they felt queer, managed to dash as far as the pork-butcher's shop. Breeding always tells.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
He'll never let his friends be at ease, and he'll never be at ease himself!
Esteem | Hate | Impertinence | Love |
From our position of being reasonably well off and comfortable, [perhaps] university professors, we tend to be patronizing about the poor in a very specific sense, which is that we tend to think, ‘Why don’t they take more responsibility for their lives?’ And what we are forgetting is that the richer you are the less responsibility you need to take for your own life because everything is taken care for you. And the poorer you are the more you have to be responsible for everything about your life… My lesson is to stop berating people for not being responsible and start to think of ways instead of providing the poor with the luxury that we all have, which is that a lot of decisions are taken for us. If we do nothing, we are on the right track. For most of the poor, if they do nothing, they are on the wrong track.
Aid | Capitalism | Conversation | Good | Ideas | Play | Policy | Reason | Work | Think |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
By guts I mean, grace under pressure.
Conversation | Little | People | Writing |
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.
Conversation | Hurry | Prayer | Sense | Work |
ItÂ’s a wonderful formula for getting to heaven the quickest and easiest way. And virtually foolproof. There is no time to backslide, no temptations to bother with, no doubts to wrestle with, no spouse to have to honor, no kids to put up with, no enemies to love, no more sorrow, no more tears. Instant eternity.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Mardonius was more fond of me than I was of him. That always gives one an advantage.
Literature | Virtue | Virtue | World |
Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted.
Conversation | Discretion | Giving | Good | Love | Man | Nothing | Sense |
Every minute you are thinking of evil, you might have been thinking of good instead. Refuse to pander to a morbid interest in your own misdeeds. Pick yourself up, be sorry, shake yourself, and go on again.