This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We have more than laziness in mind that in the body.
Strength |
O villain, thou hast stol'n both mine office and my name! The one ne'er got me credit, the other mickle blame. The Comedy of Errors (Dromio of Ephesus at III, i)
Now I stand as one upon a rock, environed with a wilderness of sea, who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will in his brinish bowels swallow him.
Now my love is thaw'd; which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was.
Oh! never say that 1 was false of heart, Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
Open your ears, for which of you will stop the vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping west, making the wind my post-horse, still unfold the acts commenced on this ball of earth.
Soul |
O, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.
O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Anne Page at III, iv)
Conscience | Cunning | Defeat | Devil | Father | Force | Gall | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Murder | Oppression | Passion | Play | Power | Property | Revenge | Soul | Spirit | Tears | Weakness | Will | Words | Murder | Guilty |
It may be said that the supreme revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ and that all the rest of the Bible leads up to him. Yet there are two ways of accepting the words and example of Jesus. One is to take what he says as true because he says it, and another is to believe it because it stands the test of reflection and experience. When his way of life has been confirmed by the demands of intelligence and of practical life, it has gained the deepest security and made its strongest claims upon our loyalty.
Association | Change | Divinity | Ideas | Life | Life | Nature | People | Psychology | Sense | Sin | Strength | Association |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do; whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?
You may possess the power and might of a world ruler, but unless you gain mastery over your own mind, when the time of death arrives you still haven’t attained the power of freedom. So gain mastery over your mind!
I know a good many people, I think, who are bigots, and who know they are bigots, and are sorry for it, but they dare not be anything else.
Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL
He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.
Eldridge Cleaver, fully Leroy Eldridge Cleaver
The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.
My interest in Sufism began when I was a college student. At the time, I was a rebellious young woman who liked to wrap several shawls of '-isms' around her shoulders: I was a leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, anarcho-pacifist ... I wasn't interested in any religion and the difference between 'religiosity' and 'spirituality' was lost to me. Having spent some time of my childhood with a loving grandmother with many superstitions and beliefs, I had a sense the world was not composed of solely material things and there was more to life than I could see. But the truth is, I wasn't interested in understanding the world. I only wanted to Change it.
I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.