This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown
She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. A few hundred, she said. How do you have the time? he asked, gobsmacked. She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading! I don't know, she said, shrugging.
Books | Personality | Will | Think |
The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.
Fear |
The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.
Blame | Compassion | Fear | God | Love | Means | Reflection | Will | God |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Lunch went through with strands of talk spun out fine till they dwindled to thin little patches of silence.
Fear |
Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole
There is no doubt that now, more than ever, we must work to end our dependence on foreign oil sources. But we cannot do so by ignoring the wishes of the coastal communities that oppose drilling.
SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir. GREGORY: Do you quarrel, sir? ABRAHAM: Quarrel, sir? No, sir. SAMPSON: If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you. ABRAHAM: No better. SAMPSON: Well, sir. GREGORY: (to Sampson) Say 'better'; here comes one of my master's kinsmen. SAMPSON: Yes, better, sir. ABRAHAM: You lie. SAMPSON: Draw, if you be men! Gregory, remember thy swashing blow. (They fight)
She dreams of him that has forgot her love; you dote on her that cares not for your love. 'Tis pity love should be so contrary; and thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!
Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e'er loved, or father found, a love that makes breath poor and speech unable.
Behavior | Cause | Children | Contempt | Counsel | Desire | Duty | Father | Fear | Friend | Good | Grace | Heaven | Honor | Love | Marriage | Mind | Obedience | Pity | Pleasure | Right | Sacred | Time | Wife | Will | Wise | Wit | Woman | Friendship | Counsel | Friends |
He is only happy when he can maintain himself - mentally and spiritually - at the intersection between a vertical line and horizontal one, in a state of perfect balance. For this, he needs to know where he is located every moment, both in his relationship to the divine and to his family here on earth. If he loses that balance, he loses his power.
LIZ: What's it like in hell? KETUT: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down -- all same, at end. LIZ: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell? KETUT: Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss. LIZ: You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell -- same destinations -- are the same thing anyway? KETUT: Same-same. Same in end, so better be happy on journey.
Learning |
The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven.
Balance | Darkness | Difficulty | Light | Madness | Present |
Are you becoming more and more aware of the interconnection of all beings, creatures and elements? Do you hold as your own Jesus' words: 'And whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me'? Are you getting tired of the way our society celebrates the false ego's selfish and insatiable drive to acquire and use more and more? And does that make you want to be an agent of healing? A declaration of life's interdependence is a sign of spiritual progress.
Arrogance | Fear | Fighting | Health | Life | Life | Listening | Nature | Practice | Soul | Surrender | Uncertainty | Will |
Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. It is vain that we point them to Queen Victoria, who has carefully reared a large family, while considering and signing...
Bible | Despair | Enough | Fear | Punishment | Bible | Understand |