This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey
When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.
Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry
We are living at a time when it is absolutely essential to make a clean cut distinction between the magical attitude and the religious attitude in life. We have today as men never dreamed of having in other days, coercive control over tremendous forces in the natural world. We make daily trial of these forces, we “tempt” them, and they obey. We press the button, and throw the switch, and spin the dial, and step on the accelerator and the gods of all mythology touch their caps in deferential obedience to our slightest whim. The applied sciences of the twentieth century do make magicians of us all. It should be said at once that the pure scientist stands absolutely free of the charge of practicing magic. The affinities of pure science are with religion, in that its reference is not from the universe to man’s uses, but from man to the realities of his universe. But the pure scientist is as rare a creature in our world as the pure saint. The vulgar modern heresy that society is made up of a large number of very pure scientists and an equally large number of very impure Christians is simply grotesque. Once in a while this world sees men like Saint Francis, John Woolman, Charles Darwin, and Michael Faraday; once in a great while. But the pure scientist is as much an exception in a university laboratory as the pure saint is an exception in a sectarian meeting house. For the most part we have at hand a society of persons practicing variously in the names of religion and science a self-willed, uncritical, and arrogant attempt to make the ultimate forces give them what they severally desire. And this temptation of the Lord their God is neither science nor religion in the noblest meaning of those words.
Challenge | Confidence | History | Literature | Magic | Man | Men | Power | Practice | Relationship | Religion | Research | Spirit | Universe | Wisdom | World |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Argument | Authority | Dissent | Evidence | Fear | Husband | Inconvenient | Intelligence | Opinion | Pleasure | Power | Respect | Thinking | Truth | Will | Worth | Respect | Happiness | Old | Think | Value |
A Song : On The Green Margin - On the green margin of the brook, Despairing Phyllida reclined, Whilst every sigh, and every look, Declared the anguish of her mind. Am I less lovely then? (she cries, And in the waves her form surveyed); Oh yes, I see my languid eyes, My faded cheek, my colour fled: These eyes no more like lightning pierced, These cheeks grew pale, when Damon first His Phyllida betrayed. The rose he in his bosom wore, How oft upon my breast was seen! And when I kissed the drooping flower, Behold, he cried, it blooms again! The wreaths that bound my braided hair, Himself next day was proud to wear At church, or on the green. While thus sad Phyllida lamented, Chance brought unlucky Thyrsis on; Unwillingly the nymph consented, But Damon first the cheat begun. She wiped the fallen tears away, Then sighed and blushed, as who would say Ah! Thyrsis, I am won.
Aid | Books | Children | Day | Fidelity | Friend | Future | God | Important | Man | Merit | Power | Present | Promise | Providence | Purpose | Purpose | System | Will | Wonder | Yielding | God | Truths |
They said this mystery never shall cease: The priest promotes war, and the soldier peace.
A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen - Dear Anna, -- Between friend and friend, Prose answers every common end; Serves, in a plain and homely way, To express the occurrence of the day; Our health, the weather, and the news, What walks we take, what books we choose, And all the floating thoughts we find Upon the surface of the mind. But when a poet takes the pen, Far more alive than other men, He feels a gentle tingling come Down to his finger and his thumb, Derived from nature's noblest part, The centre of a glowing heart: And this is what the world, who knows No flights above the pitch of prose, His more sublime vagaries slighting, Denominates an itch for writing. No wonder I, who scribble rhyme To catch the triflers of the time, And tell them truths divine and clear, Which, couched in prose, they will not hear; Who laboured hard to allure and draw The loiterers I never saw, Should feel that itching and that tingling With all my purpose intermingling, To your intrinsic merit true, When called to address myself to you. Mysterious are His ways, whose power Brings forth that unexpected hour, When minds, that never met before, Shall meet, unite, and part no more; It is the allotment of the skies, The hand of the Supremely Wise, That guides and governs our affections, And plans and orders our connections: Directs us in our distant road, And marks the bounds of our abode. Thus we were settled when you found us, Peasants and children all around us, Not dreaming of so dear a friend, Deep in the abyss of Silver-End. Thus Martha, even against her will, Perched on the top of yonder hill; And you, though you must needs prefer The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre, Are come from distant Loire, to choose A cottage on the banks of Ouse. This page of Providence quite new, And now just opening to our view, Employs our present thoughts and pains To guess, and spell, what it contains: But day by day, and year by year, Will make the dark enigma clear; And furnish us, perhaps, at last, Like other scenes already past, With proof, that we, and our affairs, Are part of a Jehovah's cares: For God unfolds, by slow degrees, The purport of his deep decrees, Sheds every hour a clearer light In aid of our defective sight; And spreads, at length, before the soul A beautiful and perfect whole, Which busy man's inventive brain Toils to anticipate, in vain. Say, Anna, had you never grown The beauties of a rose full blown, Could you, though luminous your eye, By looking on the bud descry, Or guess, with a prophetic power, The future splendour of the flower? Just so, the Omnipotent, who turns The system of a world's concerns, From mere minutiae can educe Events of most important use, And bid a dawning sky display The blaze of a meridian day. The works of man tend, one and all, As needs they must, from great to small; And vanity absorbs at length The monuments of human strength. But who can tell how vast the plan Which this day's incident began? Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion For our dim-sighted observation; It passed unnoticed, as the bird That cleaves the yielding air unheard, And yet may prove, when understood, A harbinger of endless good. Not that I deem, or mean to call Friendship a blessing cheap or small; But merely to remark, that ours, Like some of nature's sweetest flowers, Rose from a seed of tiny size, That seemed to promise no such prize; A transient visit intervening, And made almost without a meaning, (Hardly the effect of inclination), Produced a friendship, then begun, That has cemented us in one; And placed it in our power to prove, By long fidelity and love, That Solomon has wisely spoken,-- 'A threefold cord is not soon broken.'
Absence | Art | Courage | Life | Life | Love | Power | Receive | Resentment | Right | Smile | Will | Art | Forgive |
Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer
Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre.
Better | Cause | Comfort | Day | Death | Faith | Famous | Fate | Force | Fortune | Grace | Hate | Hope | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mirth | Nothing | Present | Quiet | Rest | Reward | Safe | Sense | Sound | Thought | Trust | Will | World | Fate | Thought |
The regeneration of a sinner is an evidence of power in the highest sphere — moral nature; with the highest prerogative — to change nature; and operating to the highest result — not to create originally, which is great; but to create anew, which is greater.
William Blackstone, fully Sir William Blackstone
In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.
Nature then, is just nature. I admit I am very impressed with it. The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can do for is to put some order in ourselves. When a man ploughs his field at the right time, it means just that.
Good |
There is not a beast of the field but may trust his nature and follow it; certain that it will lead him to the best of which he is capable. But as for us, our only invincible enemy is our nature.
My only interest was in being an illustrator or something like that... I was a good house painter.
Desperation | Thinking |
Every accessory, every instrument of usefulness, the church has now in such a degree and of such excellence as was never known in any other age; and we want but a supreme and glorious baptism of fire to exhibit to the world such a spectacle as would raise ten thousand hallelujahs to the glory of our King.
O life of this our spring! Why fades the lotus of the water? Why fade these children of the spring, born but to smile and fall?
Power |
Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.
Beauty | Enthusiasm | Passion | Beauty |
"What," it will be questioned, "when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" "O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!'"
Aid | Destroy | God | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Need | Power | Receive | Strength | God |
Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.