This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Though woman needs the protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of the metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one.
Friends |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.
The sole means of protecting your solitude is to offend everyone, beginning with those you love.
Birth | Meaning | Responsibility |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
A soft Sea washed around the House a Sea of Summer Air and rose and fell the magic Planks that sailed without a care — for Captain was the Butterfly for Helmsman was the Bee and an entire universe for the delighted crew.
Dreams | Knowledge | Literature | Pleasure | Old |
This was the time when the rush for the spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighborhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women.
Authority | Conscience | Doubt | Fear | Justice | Knowledge | Position | Public | Responsibility | Struggle | Terror | Guilty | Understand |
All round there was a rising tide of beer, widow Désir's barrels had all been broached, beer had rounded all paunches and was overflowing in all directions, from noses, eyes - and elsewhere. People were so blown out and higgledy-piggledy, that everybody's elbows or knees were sticking into his neighbor and everybody thought it great fun to feel his neighbor's elbows. All mouths were grinning from ear to ear in continuous laughter.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
My life closed twice before its close; it yet remains to see if Immortality unveil a third event to me, so huge, so hopeless to conceive, as these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Her position before was sheltered from the light: now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding: small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes — had they been agreeable in expression, they would have been irresistible.
Friends |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
With wide-embracing love Thy Spirit animates eternal years, pervades and broods above, changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. Though earth and moon were gone, and suns and universes ceased to be, and Thou wert left alone, every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death, nor atom that his might could render void: Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, and what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
In the I [moi], the identity of Being reveals its nature as enchainment, for it appears in the form of suffering and invites us to escape. Thus escape is the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break that most radical and most unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I is the oneself [soi-même].
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
It is not by chance that Plato teaches us that matter is eternal, and that for Aristotle matter is a cause; such is the truth for the order of things. Western philosophy, which perhaps is reification itself, remains faithful to the order of things and does not know the absolute passivity, beneath the level of activity and passivity, which is contributed by the idea of creation.