This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I have never taken myself for a being. A non-citizen, a marginal type, a nothing who exists only by the excess, by the superabundance of his nothingness.
Awareness | Curiosity | Existence | Impossibility | Awareness |
No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.
The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
Some people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is called spiritual because they have heard that we need to renounce the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the flesh and live spiritually. All they understand by this is spurning worldly interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature. They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh. However, the actual case is quite different, as I have learned from an abundance of experience and conversation with angels. In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take on a mournful life for themselves, a life that is not open to heavenly joy, since our life does remain with us [after death]. No, if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
The Lord, from His Divine love by His Divine wisdom, provides the means by which people can be saved; and these means are present with every person born into the world.
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
This instinct for totality, the counterpart of the feeling, gnawing and rankling, of dissatisfaction, is the germ of all religion. But man answers the craving need of a totality and a prospect into the future according to his historical conditions. Therefore all religions are genuine rings. None of them is a counterfeit, and none of them owns exclusively the truth and the whole truth.
Intention | Man | Means | Music | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Value |
A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime.
Will |
Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key
Why is the heart that is broken considered so much more valuable than the one or the two who must cause the pain lest they themselves perish?
Need |
Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body.
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
In the common sense of the word, Judaism is not a religion, it is not a system of dogmas, of sacramental grace; it is not a bundle of rites and ceremonies; it is not a road to happiness in the hereafter; it is not a scheme of salvation from original sin; it does neither stand nor fall with our views as to the character of those books we call sacred, and as to their authorship. But it is a message to the world that righteousness must be its own reward, and is of that force which builds the world and shapes the courses of men.
Agnostic | Belief | Charity | God | Man | Mercy | Need | Pity | Thinkers | God | Agnostic |
I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets.... you will find me and Morpheus, off in a corner, necking.
A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity.
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.
Men |
The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.