This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Matsuo Bashō, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
Sound |
Ere you lie down to sleep in the night, sit still awhile, and nurse again to life your gentler self. Forget the restless, noisy spirit of the day, and encourage to speech the soft voices within you that timidly whisper of the peace of the quiet night; and occasionally look out at the quiet stars. The night will soothe you like a tender mother, folding you against her soft bosom, and hiding you from the harm of the world. Though denied and rejected by men in the light of day, the night will not reject you and in the still of her soft shadows you are free. After the day's struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.
Challenge | Freedom | Harm | Life | Life | Light | Men | Music | Peace | Quiet | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Struggle | Uncertainty | Universe | Will |
Language has become a mere mechanical vehicle transporting the outward signs of language. Language has ceased to be organic and plastic, ceased to establish things firmly. Words have become merely signs that something is being fetched out of the jumble of noise and thrown at the listener. The word is not specifically a word. It can now be replaced by signs—colour signs or sound signs; it has become an apparatus, and like every mere apparatus it is always facing the possibility of destruction. And therefore the man who does not live directly from the word, but allows himself to be dragged along by the apparatus of noise, also faces destruction at any moment.
It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.
Sound |
Verbal noise is neither silence nor sound. It permeates silence and sound alike and it causes man to forget both silence and the world. / There has ceased to be any difference between speech and silence, since one single noise of words permeates both the speaker and the non-speaker. The silent listener has simply become a non-speaker. / Verbal noise is a pseudo-language and a pseudo-silence. That is to say, something is spoken and yet it is not real language at all. Something disappears in the noise and yet it is not real silence. When the noise suddenly stops, it is not followed by silence, but merely by a pause in which the noise accumulates in order to expand with even greater force when it is released. / It is as though the noise were afraid that it might disappear, as if it were constantly on the move, because it must always be convincing itself that it really exists. It does not believe in its own existence. / The real word, on the contrary, has no such fear, even when it is not being expressed in sound: its existence is in fact even more palpable in the silence.
Existence | Force | Language | Man | Noise | Order | Silence | Sound | Speech | Words | Afraid |
Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL
O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue, with peace you force all the restless work to end; those who exalt you see and understand, and he is sound of mind who honours you. You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so you offer calm in your moist shade; you send to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend up to the highest, where I long to go. Shadow of death that brings to quiet close all miseries that plague the heart and soul, for those in pain the last and best of cures; you heal the flesh of its infirmities, dry and our tears and shut away our toil, and free the good from wrath and fretting cares.
Death | Dreams | Force | Good | Heart | Mind | Pain | Peace | Quiet | Sound | Tears | Work |
Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.
Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter
It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.
Children | Effort | Mind | Order | Sound | Time | Training | Truth |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who cometh sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
Confidence | Safe | Sound |
Miles Davis, fully Miles Dewey Davis III
I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
So many people are in pain – no matter how smart or accomplished – they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Literary education is of no value, if it is not able to build up a sound character.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?
Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West
I can write no more today. The contemplation of my sorry state has reduced me to so deep a melancholy that I contemplate opening my wrist like Petronius Arbiter and lapsing quietly into oblivion. Unlike Petronius, however, I shall have neither the sound of music nor the gentle talk of friends. I still have time to choose a better moment — besides, who knows to what nightmares I might awake.
Better | Contemplation | Melancholy | Music | Sound | Time | Contemplation |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.
Indispensable | Life | Life | Sound |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
My beloved children, who are the pupils of my eye—Truth is silent. If Truth has dawned within you, then there will be no further speech. It is silence, and silence is the greatest Truth, the best question. If there is no Truth, then there will be a lot of talk and questions. One is good and the other is bad. If there is good within you, there will be no further noise within. But if you are full of bad, there will be so much of talk, speeches and questions. Therefore, seek the good. God does not make a noise. If you need anything, then you will have only to knock, and if you are tuned to that point, with the sound of that knock you will get an answer immediately. No noise, you don't have to make a sound. This is the Truth.
God | Good | Need | Noise | Silence | Sound | Truth | Will | God |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Whenever you look, God is there. But is He a rock or a stone or a sun or a moon or a bone? No. His sound is there and His warnings are there. You can see Him. You can see His sound, His words, His speech. You can listen to the commandments given to the prophets, because they have not gone away. They are within us.
Chemistry and the Nature of Science and electricity are small. And religion is a science major, which includes all science in the core. No conflict between science and religion, because religion in itself is very science that contains essentially all the sciences. And religion is necessary and required for it is he who draws a small science goals, objectives, and puts her in the sound of its functions under the best of life .. religion is the conscience of residence .. Conscience and in turn chooses Atomic Energy Agency and constructive function .. Not cast out destruction and death on the innocent .. He calls on us to make electricity and lighting means no way to destruction.
Conscience | Death | Energy | Life | Life | Means | Nature | Religion | Science | Sound |