This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing. And thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me”; at times this even helps me to forget the other men who have what I have not and who have taken what I was too slow to take and who have seized what was beyond my reach, who are praised as I cannot be praised and who live on my death. The man who lives in division is living in death. He cannot find himself because he is lost; he has ceased to be a reality. The person he believes himself to be is a bad dream….
Desire | Hope | Nothing | Right | Trust | Will | Following | Think |
A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.
A traveler must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing.
Awareness | Desire | Ego | Experience | Good | Judgment | Order | Pain | Perception | Regard | Self | Suppression | Thought | Time | Wants | Awareness | Thought | Victim |
We live in crisis, and perhaps we find it interesting to do so. Yet we also feel guilty about it, as if we ought not to be in crisis. As if we were so wise, so able, so kind, so reasonable, that crisis ought at all times to be unthinkable. It is doubtless this “ought,” this “should” that makes our era so interesting that it cannot possibly be a time of wisdom, or even of reason. We think we know what we ought to be doing, and we see ourselves move, with the inexorable deliberation of a machine that has gone wrong, to do the opposite.
The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.
To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. [Every form of intuition and experience] die to be born again on a higher level of life.
Tim McGraw, fully Samuel Timothy "Tim" McGraw
People always ask me "Son what does it take To reach out and touch your dreams?" To them I always say Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Is it a fire that burns you up inside? How bad do you want it? How bad do you need it? Are you eating, sleeping, dreaming With that one thing on your mind? How bad do you want it? How bad do you need it? Cause if you want it all You've got to lay it all out on the line.
Care | Consequences | Desire |
W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson
To a Desolate Friend - O friend, like some cold wind to-day Your message came, and chilled the light; Your house so dark, and mine so bright,— I could not weep, I could not pray! My wife and I had kissed at morn, My children’s lips were full of song; O friend, it seemed such cruel wrong, My life so full, and yours forlorn! We slept last night clasped hand in hand, Secure and calm—and never knew How fared the lonely hours with you, What time those dying lips you fanned. We dreamed of love, and did not see The shadow pass across our dream; We heard the murmur of a stream, Not death’s for it ran bright and free. And in the dark her gentle soul Passed out, but oh! we knew it not! My babe slept fast within her cot, While yours woke to the slow bell’s toll. She paused a moment,—who can tell?— Before our windows, but we lay So deep in sleep she went away, And only smiled a sad farewell! It would be like her; well we know How oft she waked while others slept— She never woke us when she wept, It would be like her thus to go! Ah, friend! you let her stray too far Within the shadow-haunted wood, Where deep thoughts never understood Breathe on us and like anguish are. One day within that gloom there shone A heavenly dawn, and with wide eyes She saw God’s city crown the skies, Since when she hasted to be gone. Too much you yielded to her grace; Renouncing self, she thus became An angel with a human name, And angels coveted her face. Earth’s door you set so wide, alack She saw God’s gardens, and she went A moment forth to look; she meant No wrong, but oh! she came not back! Dear friend, what can I say or sing, But this, that she is happy there? We will not grudge those gardens fair Where her light feet are wandering. The child at play is ignorant Of tedious hours; the years for you To her are moments: and you too Will join her ere she feels your want. The path she wends we cannot track: And yet some instinct makes us know Hers is the joy, and ours the woe,— We dare not wish her to come back!
Choice | Contempt | Desire | Evolution | Folly | Growth | Joy | Labor | Life | Life | Little | Man | Pleasure | Tranquility | Will | Happiness |
Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry
This perpetual struggle between the magician and the religionist goes on in the mind and heart and will of every man of us. It goes on until it is rightly resolved, until man reborn into a mature religion ceases to try to coerce his God, and says humbly with Dante, “In thy will is our peace.” Religion, then, is not a matter of turning God to account in the realization of our own desires. Religion is trying to discover what God is about and then offering oneself to the Eternal Goodness, “as a man’s hand is to a man.” “It is not in man,” says a modern thinker, “to make religion what he will have her be, but only to become what religion is making him.” Perhaps, then, it is to save a man from the defeat and disillusionment of childish magic that there stands in our Bible that old story of the temptation of Jesus. Its ramifications and restatements are legion. Thou shalt not use thy God to get thy way. Thou shalt not coerce the Infinite to further the headstrong passing whim of the finite. Thou shalt not break the laws of health and then cajole thy God into working thee a miracle of healing. Thou shalt not let thy mind rot in idleness and then look for a sudden inspiration given by reality. Thou shalt not spend thine all upon the world that passes away and ask thy God at thy latter end to give thee the sudden boon of a credible immortality. Thou shalt not take this attitude at all, using the Most High as an amplifier and emergency device for realizing thy solitary and selfish will. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” We are being told on all sides that religion is now breaking down, that its beliefs are an outworn delusion, and that all thoughtful men are being liberated into a perfect skepticism. That is not what is happening. What is happening is this, men are discovering again what they have discovered often before and then have forgotten, that magic will not work. But religion as a final attitude and reference of the finite human spirit towards its infinite universe remains and always must remain. It is the disposition of those disciplined natures of whom we say that they are pure in mind and heart and will. The true alternative to the outworn magic of primitive peoples is not the modern magic of persons disciplined in the applied sciences or the “new thought.” It is no solution of the ultimate moral and intellectual problem to trade self-will from the left hand of primitive magic to the right hand of applied science. What matters is a changed disposition and reference in this whole final commerce of man with his universe. Call it pure religion or pure science, the name does not matter. The one thing needful is that temper and disposition towards the will of God which we find in Jesus, Bernard, Pascal and Lister alike.
Control | Distinction | God | Lord | Man | Meaning | Men | Obedience | Religion | Science | Society | Temptation | Time | Universe | World | Society | Trial | God | Temptation |
Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey
Coaching is an art that must be learned mostly from experience. In the Inner Game approach, coaching is ‘the facilitation of mobility.’ It is the art of creating an environment through conversation, and a way of being, that facilitates the process by which a person can move toward desired goals in a fulfilling manner. It requires one essential ingredient that cannot be taught: Caring not only for the external results but for the person being coached.
Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry
O God, forgive our wanton waste of the wealth of the soil and sea and air; our desecration of natural beauty; our heedlessness of those who shall come after us, if only we be served; our undue love of money; our contempt for small things and our worship of what is big; our neglect of struggling peoples, For such wrongs to our natural and human heritage, and for many things left undone, forgive us, O God.
Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer
The man of Woe - The mann whose thoughtes agaynste him do conspyre, One whom Mishapp her storye dothe depaynt, The mann of woe, the matter of desier, Free of the dead, that lives in endles plaint, His spirit am I, whiche in this deserte lye, To rue his case, whose cause I cannot flye. Despayre my name, whoe never findes releife, Frended of none, but to my selfe a foe; An idle care, mayntaynde by firme beleife That prayse of faythe shall throughe my torments growe, And counte those hopes, that others hartes do ease, Butt base conceites the common sense to please. For sure I am I never shall attayne The happy good from whence my joys aryse; Nor haue I powre my sorrows to refrayne But wayle the wante, when noughte ellse maye suffyse; Whereby my lyfe the shape of deathe muste beare, That deathe which feeles the worst that lyfe doth feare. But what auayles withe tragicall complaynte, Not hopinge healpe, the Furyes to awake? Or why shoulde I the happy mynds aquaynte With doleful tunnes, theire settled peace to shake? All ye that here behoulde Infortune's feare, May judge noe woe may withe my gref compare. Finis. Sir Edward Dyer
Desire | Good | Happy | Hope | Love | Man | Present | Wise | Woe |
These are the idiots’ chiefest arts: To blend and not define the parts The swallow sings, in courts of kings, That fools have their high finishings. And this the princes’ golden rule, The laborious stumble of a fool. To make out the parts is the wise man’s aim, But to loose them the fool makes his foolish game.
All Religions are One - THE ARGUMENT AS the true method of Knowledge is Experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of: Principle 1 That the Poetic Genius is the True Man, and that the Body or Outward Form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Like-wise that the Forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call’d an Angel and Spirit and Demon. Principle 2 As all men are alike in Outward Form; so, and with the same infinite variety, all are alike in the Poetic Genius. Principle 3 No man can think, write, or speak from his heart, but he must intend Truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius, adapted to the weaknesses of every individual. Principle 4 As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown; so, from already acquired knowledge, Man could not acquire more; therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists. Principle 5 The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation’s different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is everywhere call’d the Spirit of Prophecy. Principle 6 The Jewish and Christian Testaments are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation. Principle 7 As all men are alike, tho’ infinitely various; so all Religions: and as all similars have one source the True Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.
Desire | Despair | Eternal | Man | Organic | Perception | Religion | Sense |
The difference between a bad artist and a good one is the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.
Wassily Kandinsky understood ‘form’ as a form, like an object in the real world; and a object, he said, was a narrative – and so, of course, he disapproved of it. He wanted ‘his music without words’. He wanted to be ‘simple as a child’. He intended, with his ‘inner-self’ to rid himself of ‘philosophical barricades’ (he sat down and wrote something about all this). But in turn his own writing has become a philosophical barricade, even it is a barricade full of holes. It offers a kind of Middle European idea of Buddhism or, anyhow, something too theosophical for me.
Age | Desire | Future | Happy | Ideas | Life | Life | Think |
As to politics, we were like the rest of the country people in England; that is to say, we neither knew nor thought anything about the matter.
Desire | Evil | Speculation | Thought | Thought |