This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Four Approaches to Growing into Silence - Be precise, accurate and totally present with everything that one does. Expose oneself as much as one can to nature, to the universe, all that is not man-made. Be a disciple of one's own understanding. Keep the body and brain sensitive, alert and sharp.
Aggression | Responsibility | Survival | Crisis |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
So the days pass and I ask myself sometimes whether one is not hypnotised, as a child by a silver globe, by life; and whether this is living. It’s very quick, bright, exciting. But superficial perhaps. I should like to take the globe in my hands and feel it quietly, round, smooth, heavy, and so hold it, day after day. I will read Proust I think. I will go backwards and forwards.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it.
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., fully Thomas John Watson, Jr.
Machines might give us more time to think but will never do our thinking for us.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes. The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation — until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.
Cause |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
A mockingbird ... was heard to blend the songs of 32 different kinds of birds into a ten minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.
How to deal with the goodness of their loved ones? Could be fought against goodness?
Chastity | Earth | Giving | Good | Guilt | Impression | Responsibility | Self | Truth | Wrong |
Why, what's wrong! Religions are like rivers: all flow into a sea. Mother Mary embodies compassion, mercy, love and unconditional love. It is personal, but belongs to everyone. Never mind that you're a Muslim, you can still love her and even called his daughter Maria.
Literature | People | Right | Teach | Writing |
Together, we can answer this question. If you've been holding off on contributing to a presidential campaign, now's the time to jump in. We have a Democratic nominee, and he needs our support today.
The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.
Infancy |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
Someone may object that material things extend beyond the realm of our present perception. It belongs to their very essence to be more than what is intimated or revealed in a continuum of subjective aspects at the moment of perception. They are also there when we do not perceive them: they exist in themselves.
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
In work - meaning, in effort, in its pain and sorrow - the subject finds the weight of the existence which involves its existent freedom itself. Pain and sorrow are' the phenomena to which the solitude of the existent is finally reduced.
Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith
"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."
Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |