This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Satchel Paige, fully Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
The secret of meditation is to be conscious of each second of your existence and to keep the sun of awareness continually shining - in both the physical and psychological realms, in all circumstances, on each thing that arises.
Awareness | Circumstances | Existence | Meditation | Awareness |
The mind by passion driven from its firm hold, becomes a feather to each wind that blows.
It is the mind that makes the body rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honour peereth in the meanest habit.
Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"
When a man reproached Diogenes for going into unclean places he said, “The sun too penetrates into privies, but it is not polluted by them.”
Man |
Earle Birney, fully Earle Alfred Birney
The Sun never sets. It is we who rise think to shine.
Think |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Better | Ends | God | Love | Men | Passion | Quiet | Soul | God | Old |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
It is the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life - and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that very well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.
Age | Day | Grief | Happy | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Mystery | Serenity | Soul | Old |
Gossip … has caused infinitely more sorrow in life than murder. It is drunkenness of the tongue; it is assassination of reputations. It runs the cowardly gamut from mere ignorant, impertinent intrusion into the lives of others to malicious slander ... He who listens to this crime of respectability without protest is as evil as he who speaks. One strong, manly voice of protest, of appeal to justice, of calling halt in the name of charity—could fumigate a room from gossip as a clear, sharp winter wind kills a pestilence.
Crime | Evil | Life | Life | Protest | Slander | Sorrow | Slander | Gossip |
You feel you are hedged in; you dream of escape; but beware of mirages. Do not run or fly away in order to get free: rather dig in the narrow place which has been given you; you will find God there and everything. God does not float on your horizon, he sleeps in your substance. Vanity runs, love digs. If you fly away from yourself, your prison will run with you and will close in because of the wind of your flight; if you go deep down into yourself it will disappear in paradise
The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.
Appetite | Art | Despair | Land | Light | Qualities | Work | Obtuse | Loss | Art |
Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop.
Childhood | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Power | Religion | World |
Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them. I have but to touch the wind to know these things.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor.
"A family without government," says Matthew Henry, "is like a house without a roof, exposed to every wind that blows." He might better have said, like a house in flames, a scene of confusion, and commonly too hot to live in.