This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent, and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
So she said banteringly: "What's the unit of exchange in this different world of yours?" He did not hesitate. "The tear." "It isn't fair," she objected. "Some people have to work very hard for a tear. Others can have them just for thinking." "What system of exchange is fair?" he cried, and his voice sounded as if he were really drunk. "And whoever invented the concept of fairness, anyway? Isn't everything easier if you simply get rid of the idea of justice altogether? You think the quantity of pleasure, the degree of suffering is constant among all men? It somehow comes out in the end? ou think that? If it comes out even it's only because the final sum is zero."
Justice | People | Suffering | System | Work | World | Think |
Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith
The shadow of a sound, a voice without a mouth, and words without a tongue.
Words |
Genius sits in a glass house -- but in an unbreakable one --conceiving ideas. After giving birth, it falls into madness. Stretches out its hand through the window toward the first person happening by. The demon's claw rips, the iron fist grips. Before, you were a model, mocks the ironic voice between serrated teeth, for me, you are raw material to work on. I throw you against the glass wall, so that you remain stuck there, projected and stuck. (Then come the lovers of art and contemplate the bleeding work from outside. Then come the photographers. New art, it says in the newspaper the following day. The learned journals give it a name that ends in ism.)
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea.
Love can take us to heaven or hell, but it always takes us somewhere. Therefore, be prepared to travel… Love does not ask many questions, because if we start thinking began to be afraid. It is an inexplicable fear, and not worth trying to translate it into words. It may be the fear of contempt, unless accepted, to break the spell. It sounds ridiculous, but true. So no wonder: it operates. As you yourself have said many times, take the risks... Love doesn't need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself… Love fills everything. It cannot be desired because it is an end in itself. It cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession. It cannot be held prisoner because it is a river and will overflow its banks. Anyone who tries to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the trapped water will grow stagnant… Love is fused with the people we love and find a spark of God in him.
Fear | God | Heaven | Love | Need | Nothing | People | Thinking | Will | Worth | God |
He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone. The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity... He is made one with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely. The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments. The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone.
Enthusiasm | Melody | Tears | Tenderness |
All love is sweet, Given or returned (received). Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air, It makes the reptile equal to the God; They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now; but those who feel it most Are happier still.
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
World |
How sweetly sounds the voice of a good woman! It is so seldom heard that, when it speaks, it ravishes all senses.
Good |
Philip Larkin, fully Philip Arthur Larkin
On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
Love |
Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realized and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.
Circumstances | Enough | Good | Justify | Necessity | Right | Teach | Time |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
The person, who is in tune with the universe, becomes like a radio receiver through which the Voice of the universe is transmitted.
Universe |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of our Beloved. It is because music is the picture of our Beloved that we love music. But the question is what is our Beloved and where is our Beloved? Our Beloved is that which is our source and our goal; and what we see of our Beloved before our physical eyes is the beauty which is before us; and that part of our Beloved not manifest to our eyes is that inner form of beauty of which our Beloved speaks to us. If only we would listen to the voice of all the beauty that attracts us in any form, we would find that in every aspect it tells us that behind all manifestation is the perfect Spirit, the spirit of wisdom.
Beauty | Love | Music | Nothing | Question | Spirit | Beauty |
Pope Agapet II, aka Pope Agapetus II NULL
A frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons make them so like, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very face and tone of voice contract a certain analogy.
The living voice is that which sways the soul.
Internally, secretly, among the thinking thousands of this and other lands, is this and many other questions now being asked: "Why must we so wither and decay, and lose the best that life is worth living for, just as we have gained that experience and wisdom that best fits us to live?" The voice of the people is always at first a whispered voice. The prayer or demand or desire of the masses is always at first a secret prayer, demand, wish, or desire, which one man at first dare scarcely whisper to his neighbor for fear of ridicule.
Desire | Experience | Fear | Life | Life | Man | People | Prayer | Thinking | Wisdom | Worth |
With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you; / This gentle call is for you my love, for you.[Anne Gilchrist heard the voice of Whitman calling to her across the sea, and responded]