This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
Speech |
Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all; the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared.
Oppression | Speech | Wonder |
Nothing is more dangerous to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.
Roland B. Gittelsohn, fully Roland Bertram Gittelsohn
This is the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D–day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the side with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island.It is not easy to do so,” He continued. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their place. Indeed some of us are alive and breathing at this very monent only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of men such as these is not easy . . . No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead of our Division who are not here have already done. All we can even hope to do is follow their example. To show the same selfless courage in peace as they did in war. To swear by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours will never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. . . . “We dedicate ourselves, first, to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried in this war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor--- together . . . . Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. Any man among us, the living, who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother . . . . makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates an empty, hollow mockery. To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars. We shall not foolishly suppose, as did the last generation of America’s fighting men, that victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of Democracy at home. This war with all its frightful heartache and suffering, is but the beginning of our generations struggle for democracy . . . . Thus do we memorialize those who, have ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come—we promise – the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
Beginning | Birth | Ceremony | Courage | Democracy | Earth | Fighting | Freedom | God | Guarantee | Hate | Hope | Man | Memory | Men | Mourn | Nothing | Pain | Peace | Power | Price | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Speech | Strength | Struggle | War | Will | God | Blessed | Friends | Understand |
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
SCORN NOT THE LEAST - WHERE wards are weak and foes encount'ring strong, Where mightier do assault than do defend, The feebler part puts up enforcèd wrong, And silent sees that speech could not amend. Yet higher powers must think, though they repine, When sun is set, the little stars will shine. While pike doth range the seely tench doth fly, And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish ; Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by, These fleet afloat while those do fill the dish. There is a time even for the worm to creep, And suck the dew while all her foes do sleep. The merlin cannot ever soar on high, Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase ; The tender lark will find a time to fly, And fearful hare to run a quiet race : He that high growth on cedars did bestow, Gave also lowly mushrumps leave to grow. In Aman's pomp poor Mardocheus wept, Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe ; The lazar pined while Dives' feast was kept, Yet he to heaven, to Hell did Dives go. We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May, Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.
Fate | God | Growth | Hell | Little | Quiet | Race | Speech | Time | Will | Fate | God |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Lord, what is man but flesh and blood? O weep! His days unconscious stray, like shadows sweep, His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep. Lord, what is man? A carcase fouled and trodden, A noxious creature brimming with deceit, A fading flow’r that shrivels in the heat. Wert Thou as stern as he with sin is sodden, How could he face Thy wrath? Ah, see him creep: His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep. Lord, what is man? He rolls in mud and lies, Insanely fouls the clean and spoils the fine. Did but Thy justice follow his design, Mown like the grass were he, or herb that dies. In doom’s dark hour be then Thy pity deep, His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep. Lord, what is man? Proud, born in sin, defiant, His drink is violence and on wrong he feeds. Sea-tossed and furnace-fierce, if judged by deeds He would be crushed like weakling fighting giant. Thy mercy therefore let his prayer reap, His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep. Lord, what is man? A trickster vile, abhorred. If Thou shouldst deal with him in equity, A mouldered robe, a scattered cloud were he. Therefore forgiveness is his best award. His base is dust, his form a clayey heap, His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep. Lord, what is man? A tree despoiled, mere stubble Its only fruit. Didst Thou his sin repay, He like a snail or wax would melt away. Therefore forgive, nor press him in his trouble. Moth-like he rots, old joys he can but weep, His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep. Lord, what is man? A lonely creature driven Like fallen leaf, bemocked by empty words, As full of guile as basket is of birds. His rottenness would swift as smoke be riven, Didst Thou his measure, not Thy measure keep. His stroke comes sudden and he falls on sleep.
Day | Force | Greatness | Heart | Love | Merit | Soul | Speech | Thought | Work | Thought |
Rose-Morals - I. -- Red. Would that my songs might be What roses make by day and night -- Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight. Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast As yon red rose, and dare the day, All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest? Say yea -- say yea! Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, I strive, I pray. II. -- White. Soul, get thee to the heart Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -- There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer. Of spirit grave yet light, How fervent fragrances uprise Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities! Mulched with unsavory death, Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, thy fate.
Battle | Blasphemy | Contemplation | Day | Death | Dreams | Hate | Law | Life | Life | Little | Love | Need | Rage | Riches | Right | Self | Sense | Silence | Smile | Soul | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Terror | Time | Wrong | Riches | Contemplation | Old |
The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us.
Ability | Action | Anxiety | Anxiety | Attention | Body | Change | Character | Consciousness | Consequences | Desire | Focus | Forgetfulness | Generosity | Habit | Intention | Language | Meditation | Mind | Nature | Object | Order | Pain | Power | Practice | Prayer | Promise | Reality | Sabbath | Speech | Taste | Temptation | Time | Training | Unconsciousness | Torah | Temptation |
The people that make this country work, the people who pay on their mortgages, the people getting up and going to work, striving in this recession to not participate in it, they're not the enemy. They're the people that hire you. They're the people that are going to give you a job.
Death | Life | Life | Morality | Nothing | Speech | Work | Wrong |
I treasure your knowing how to give the world a kick.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with fair colors!
In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Free speech | Life | Life | Speech |
I love my liberty, and imprisonment would be, to say the least, very disagreeable to me; but there are some things that are even less desirable, among them one's loss of self-respect and the loss of inherent and lawful constitutional rights.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion — in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant, and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology. it has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now since I have hit upon the neuroses, it has come so much the nearer.
Body | Doubt | Mind | Nothing | Order | Science | Speech | Will | Words | Understand |