This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When one that holds communion with the skies has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise, and once more mingles with us meaner things, 'tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
I bet you if I had met him [Trotsky] and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn’t like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them.
Church |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
One might say that every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure; a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique. A quality which one can remember without the volume at hand, can experience over and over again in the mind but can never absolutely define, as one can experience in memory a melody, or the summer perfume of a garden... It is a common fallacy that a writer, if he is talented enough, can achieve this poignant quality by improving upon his subject-matter, by using his "imagination" upon it and twisting it to suit his purpose. The truth is that by such a process (which is not imaginative at all!) he can at best produce only a brilliant sham, which, like a badly built and pretentious house, looks poor and shabby after a few years. If he achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine. The artist spends a lifetime in pursuing the things that haunt him, in having his mind "teased" by them, in trying to get these conceptions down on paper exactly as they are to him and not in conventional poses supposed to reveal their character; trying this method and that, as a painter tries different lightings and different attitudes with his subject to catch the one that presents it more suggestively than any other. And at the end of a lifetime he emerges with much that is more or less happy experimenting, and comparatively little that is the very flower of himself and his genius.
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
Church | Government | Traitor | Government |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Walking uplifts the spirit. Breathe out the poisons of tension, stress, and worry; breathe in the power of God. Send forth little silent prayers of goodwill toward those you meet. Walk with a sense of being a part of a vast universe. Consider the thousands of miles of earth beneath your feet; think of the limitless expanse of space above your head. Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime.
Chance | Church | Famous | Happy | Laughter | Little | Thinking |
The prophet is engaged in a battle for language in an effort to create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge.
Those who are living in anxiety and fear, most especially fear of scarcity, have no time or energy for the common good. Anxiety is no adequate basis for the common good; anxiety will cause the formulation of policy and of exploitative practices that are inimical to the common good, a systemic greediness that precludes the common good.
Walter Gropius, fully Walter Adolph Georg Gropius
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.
The contemporary abrasion between imperial ideology and poetic alternative is a contentious one, with the poetic alternative being fragile and mostly unauthorized and unrecognized.
Capitalism | Church | Force |
On Epiphany day, we are still the people walking. We are still people in the dark, and the darkness looms large around us, beset as we are by fear, anxiety, brutality, violence, loss, a dozen alienations that we cannot manage. We are-we could be-people of your light. So we pray for the light of your glorious presence as we wait for your appearing; we pray for the light of your wondrous grace as we exhaust our coping capacity; we pray for your gift of newness that will override our weariness; we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust in your good rule. That we may have energy, courage,...
In Clementina’s artless mien Lucilla asks me what I see, and are the roses of sixteen enough for me? Lucilla asks, if that be all, have I not cull’d as sweet before: ah yes, Lucilla! and their fall I still deplore. I now behold another scene, where Pleasure beams with Heaven’s own light, more pure, more constant, are serene, and not less bright. Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose, whose chain of flowers no force can sever, and Modesty who, when she goes, is gone forever.