This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you anymore but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman.
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes. - The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives - all bear secret relations to our destinies.
Abuse | Destiny | Ends | Example | Family | Future | Glory | Humility | Nothing | Search | Silence | Thought | Following | Old | Thought |
It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion --to rid God of His Maggots.
Silence |
Befriend him, death, and pity him, may he from here arise. Unharmed, with sound limbs, hearing perfectly, through old age carrying a hundred years, let him get enjoyment by himself (unaided).
Wonder |
What little man has to accomplish must be done quickly, at the place that is assigned to him and within the time that is allotted to him. And, man has such a formidable task before him; it is to fulfill it that he has come as man, exchanging for this human habitat all the merit he has acquired during many past lives. The task is no less than the manifestation of the Divinity latent in man.
Awe | Capacity | Control | Humility | Man | Sense | Will | Wonder |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.
Capitalism | Economics | Envy | Force | Listening | Past | Rites | Sacrifice | Understand |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.
The relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being.
Culture | Happy | People | Revolution | Society | Strength | Trust | Wonder | World | Society |
If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities.
That is very dangerous... in an absolutely legal way and in accordance with the wording of the law, but against the spirit of the ... constitution.