This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O Cromwell, Cromwell, Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies. The Life of King Henry the Eighth (Wolsey at IV, i)
Will |
O heaven, that such companions thou 'ldst unfold, and put in every honest hand a whip to lash the rascals naked through the world.
Letters are commonplace enough, yet what splendid things they are! When someone is in a distant province and one is worried about him, and then a letter suddenly arrives, one feels as though one were seeing him face to face. Again, it is a great comfort to have expressed one's feelings in a letter even though one knows it cannot yet have arrived. If letters did not exist, what dark depressions would come over one! When one has been worrying about something and wants to tell a certain person about it, what a relief it is to put it all down in a letter! Still greater is one's joy when a reply arrives. At that moment a letter really seems like an elixir of life.
The language of symbol and dream is the route to the unconscious whole. Within these two facets of mind we must look if we would find security. This has been the route specifically human, the dual level contained within the universal concept of being. It has been mostly a foreign language, but in recent decades we have grown to comprehend that if we could remember the past, we could find the conception of a future which is daily being unfolded.
Isn't there a picture that belongs in the original frame? Life [one suspects she means spiritual life] cannot die. You can explode its dynamism [the physical body] but you cannot dissipate its energy. If you suffer where life suffered, the essence that once filled the frame will take from you something to dramatize and live again.
Eternal | Experience | Knowledge | Prediction |
Hell is the here and now. Heaven too. Stop being afraid of hell and dream of paradise, because the one and the other is set in the present moment. Every time you fall in love, to ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy or confront someone, fall right into hellfire.
Stay, my lord, And let your reason with your choler question What 'tis you go about: to climb steep hills Requires slow pace at first: anger is like A full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way, Self-mettle tires him. Not a man in England Can advise me like you: be to yourself As you would to your friend.
Sound |
Such men as he be never at heart's ease Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, And therefore are they very dangerous.
Day |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
The little fishing boat anchors right off the shore of Gili Meno. There are no docks here on this island. You have to roll up your pants, jump off the boat and wade in through the surf on your own power. There's absolutely no way to do this without getting soaking wet or even banged up on the coral, but it's worth all the trouble because the beach here is so beautiful, so special.
Talking |
What time has ever been a simple time for those who are living it?
Existence | Forgiveness | Fortitude | Talking | Understanding | Forgiveness |
And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.
Good | Life | Life | People | Promise | Right | Thought | Will | Thought |