This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
I just think that dreams are best, Just to sit and fancy things; Give your gold no acid test, Try not how your silver rings; Fancy women pure and good, Fancy men upright and true: Fortressed in your solitude, Let Life be a dream to you. For I think that Thought is all; Truth's a minion of the mind; Love's ideal comes at call; As ye seek so shall ye find. But ye must not seek too far; Things are never what they seem: Let a star be just a star, And a woman -- just a dream. O you Dreamers, proud and pure, You have gleaned the sweet of life! Golden truths that shall endure Over pain and doubt and strife. I would rather be a fool Living in my Paradise, Than the leader of a school, Sadly sane and weary wise. O you Cynics with your sneers, Fallen brains and hearts of brass, Tweak me by my foolish ears, Write me down a simple ass! I'll believe the real "you" Is the "you" without a taint; I'll believe each woman too, But a slightly damaged saint. Yes, I'll smoke my cigarette, Vestured in my garb of dreams, And I'll borrow no regret; All is gold that golden gleams. So I'll charm my solitude With the faith that Life is blest, Brave and noble, bright and good,
Doubt | Dreams | Faith | Gold | Life | Life | Men | Pain | Thought | Woman | Leader | Think | Thought | Truths |
Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli
Mercury has cast aside The signs of intellectual pride, Freely offers thee the soul: Art thou noble to receive? Canst thou give or take the whole, Nobly promise and believe? Then thou wholly human art, A spotless, radiant, ruby heart, And the golden chain of love Has bound thee to the realm above. Guard thee from the power of evil; Who cannot trust, vows to the devil.
Beauty | Culture | Friend | Life | Life | Light | Prison | Simplicity | Spirit | Wealth | Beauty |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking in a field at dawn. You are yourself the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt. You're in your body like a plant is solid in the ground, yet you're wind. You're the diver's clothes lying empty on the beach. You're the fish. In the ocean are many bright strands and many dark strands like veins that are seen when a wing is lifted up. Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins that are lute strings that make ocean music, not the sad sound of surf, but the sound of no shore.
God has been very good to me, for I never dwell upon anything wrong which a person has done, so as to remember it afterwards. If I do remember it, I always see some other virtue in that person.
Archibald Geikie, fully Sir Archibald Geikie
Geologists have not been slow to admit that they were in error in assuming that they had an eternity of past time for the evolution of the earth's history. They have frankly acknowledged the validity of the physical arguments which go to place more or less definite limits to the antiquity of the earth. They were, on the whole, disposed to acquiesce in the allowance of 100 millions of years granted to them by Lord Kelvin, for the transaction of the whole of the long cycles of geological history. But the physicists have been insatiable and inexorable. As remorseless as Lear's daughters, they have cut down their grant of years by successive slices, until some of them have brought the number to something less than ten millions. In vain have the geologists protested that there must somewhere be a flaw in a line of argument which tends to results so entirely at variance with the strong evidence for a higher antiquity, furnished not only by the geological record, but by the existing races of plants and animals. They have insisted that this evidence is not mere theory or imagination, but is drawn from a multitude of facts which become hopelessly unintelligible unless sufficient time is admitted for the evolution of geological history. They have not been able to disapprove the arguments of the physicists, but they have contended that the physicists have simply ignored the geological arguments as of no account in the discussion.
History | Occupation | Problems | Training |
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
My dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.
Stanislas de Boufflers, fully Marquis Stanislas-Jean de Boufflers, Chevalier de Boufflers
Oblivion is a second death, which great minds dread more than the first.
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
Children | Evil | Experience | Fury | Grave | Hope | Insecurity | Knowing | Life | Life | Mortal | Nothing | Parents | Revelation | Sense | Sound | Tenderness | Uncertainty | Understanding | Will |
Plays and romances sell as well as books of devotion, but with this difference,--more people read the former than buy them, and more buy the latter than read them.
Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL
When the absolute Reality is known, it is seen to be without any individual selves, and devoid of any objective forms; All past [mental and physical] actions which lead to hell are instantly wiped away. After the Awakening, there is only vast Emptiness; this vast universe of forms ceases to exist [outside of one's Self]. Here, one sees neither sin nor bliss, neither loss nor gain. In the midst of the eternal Serenity, no questions arise; The dust of ignorance which has accumulated on the unpolished mirror for ages, Is now, and forever, cleared away in the vision of Truth.
Earth | Glory | Guidance | Heaven | Light | Love | Nature | Reason | Soul | Troubles | Guidance | Learn |
The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd!
Age | Beauty | Books | Children | Cost | Credit | Day | Disdain | Example | Glory | Grace | Heaven | Hope | Kill | Little | Love | Marriage | Nature | Reward | Sense | Silence | Thought | Time | Truth | Wants | Waste | Wisdom | Beauty | Old | Thought |
Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments before you open your eyes.
Between the dark lakes where the dark rivers flow there is no ferry waiting on the shore of rock and no man holding a long oar, ready to take your last coin. This is the real earth and the real water it contains.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
Prayer is intended to increase the devotion of the individual, but if the individual himself prays he requires no formula; he pours himself forth much more naturally in self-chosen and connected thoughts before God, and scarcely requires words at all. Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.
Power |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
In other searchings it might be the object of the quest that brought satisfaction, or it might be something incidental that one got on the way; but in religion, desire was fulfilment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded.