This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If we imagine ourselves as being every bit as huge, deep, mysterious, and awe-inspiring as the night sky, we might begin to appreciate how complicated we are as individuals, and how much of who we are is unknown not only to others but to ourselves.
Awe |
Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s Palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
Angels | Earth | Enjoyment | Esteem | Father | Heaven | Right | World |
Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar... Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice. Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment... This above all: To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man. Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Polonius at I, iii)
Censure | Day | Judgment | Man | Means | Reserve | Self | Thought | Thought |
This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurses arms. Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. And then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress eyebrow. Then a soldier, full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannons mouth. And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lind, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; and so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon dotard, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, his youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. As You Like It (Jaques at II, vii)
Age | Ends | Good | Man | Men | Reputation | Time | Wise | World |
Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten.
Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch
One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed.
Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own try self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Worship is the soul searching for its counterpart. It is a thirsty land crying out for rain. It is a candle in the act of being kindled. It is a drop in quest of the ocean. It is a man listening through a tornado for a Still Small Voice. It is the voice in the night calling for help. It is a sheep lost in the wilderness, pleading for rescue by the Good Shepherd. It is the same sheep nestling in the arms of the Rescuer. It is the Prodigal Son running to his Father. It is a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the Universe. It is a poet enthralled by the beauty of a sunrise. It is a workman pausing for a moment to listen to a strain of music. It is a hungry heart seeking for love. It is Time flowing into Eternity… It is man climbing the altar stairs to God.
Awe | Beauty | Eternity | Father | God | Good | Heart | Land | Listening | Love | Man | Music | Mystery | Soul | Time | Universe | Worship | Beauty |
When you live with another person for 50 years, all of your memories are invested in that person, like a bank account of shared memories. It's not that you refer to them constantly. In fact, for people who do not live in the past, you almost never say, 'Do you remember that night we...?' But you don't have to. That is the best of all. You know that the other person does remember. Thus, the past is part of the present as long as the other person lives. It is better than any scrapbook, because you are both living scrapbooks.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, but in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and penetrating. It is the polarity of earth and rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
Effort | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Suffering | Will | Worth |
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Men |
You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.
Day | Duty | Fear | Forgetfulness | Individual | Life | Life | Light | Music | Pessimism |
Henry Beston, born Henry Beston Sheahan
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity.
Adventure | Experience | Fear | Reverence |
Henry Beston, born Henry Beston Sheahan
For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in a stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
World |