This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One would expect writers and artists to understand one another better than anyone else and to be more appreciative of one another's works. That, sadly, is not always the case. Writers Rarely say anything positive About each Other.
Acceptance | Change | Mistake | Past | People | Submission |
If you ask for the purpose or goal of society as a whole or of an individual taken as a whole the question loses its meaning. This is, of course, even more so if you ask the purpose or meaning of nature in general. For in those cases it seems quite arbitrary if not unreasonable to assume somebody whose desires are connected with the happenings.
Action | Consequences | Desire | Earnestness | Fulfillment | Individual | Life | Life | Mankind | Opinion | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Struggle |
In responding to this poignant cry for help, Einstein offered no easy solace, and this very fact must have heartened the student and lightened the lonely burden of his doubts. Here is Einstein's response. It was written in English and sent from Princeton on 3 December 1950, within days of receiving the letter:
Individual | Meaning | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Society | Society |
ROSENCRANTZ: I understand you not, my lord. HAMLET: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing — GUILDENSTERN: A thing, my lord? HAMLET: Of nothing.
Service | Speech | Understand |
Reflection is the business of man; a sense of his state is his first duty: but who remembereth himself in joy? Is it not in mercy then that sorrow is allotted unto us?
Change |
I slowly came to recognize individual monks within the crowds of interchangeable orange robes and shaved heads. There were flirtatious and daring monks who stood on each other's shoulders to peek over the temple at you and call out Hello, Mrs. Lady! as you walked by. There were novices who snuck cigarettes at night outside the temple walls, the embers of their smokes glowing as orange as their robes. I saw a buff teenage monk doing push-ups, and I spotted another one with an unexpectdely gangsterish tattoo of a knife emblazoned on one golden shoulder. One night I'd eavesdropped while a handful of monks sang Bob Marley songs to each other underneath a tree in a temple garden, long after they should have been asleep. I'd even seen a knot of barely adolescent novices kickboxing each other - a display of good-natured competition, that like boys' games all over the world, carried the threat of turning truly violent at a moment's notice.
Change |
I tried to reassure him with every line about how the world is hard and unfair sometimes, but that it's all OK because he is so loved. He is surrounded by souls who would do anything to help him. And not only that--he has wisdom and patience of his own, buried deep inside his being, which will only reveal themselves over time and will always carry him through any trial. He is a gift from God to all of us.
I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, I don't want my children growing up in a household like this. Susan said, Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore?
In the modern industrialized Western world, where I come from, the person whom you choose to marry is perhaps the single most vivid representation of your own personality. Your spouse becomes the most gleaming possible mirror through which your emotional individualism is reflected back to the world. There is no choice more intensely personal after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.
People think a soul mate is the one that fits them perfectly, and we all want. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that hinders and the person that your attention is directed to you, that could change your life. Probably the most important person you'll ever meet, but live forever with soulmate? No. Too painful. Soulmate in your life comes to you revealing a layer you, and then leave. And thank God for that.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your inner contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
Attention | Change | God | Important | Life | Life | Soul | God | Think |
I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.
Attention | Change | Control | Death | Ego | God | Heart | Important | Life | Life | Light | Little | Love | Marriage | Mind | People | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Relationship | Right | Soul | Space | Time | Universe | Will | God | Afraid | Think | Understand |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
'Tis aye a solemn thing to me to look upon a babe that sleeps-- wearing in its spirit-deeps the unrevealed mystery of its Adam's taint and woe, which, when they revealed lie, will not let it slumber so.