This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
That is spiritual knowledge which alters the relish of the soul; for we must know there is a bitter opposition in our nature against all saving truths; especially, there is a contrariety between our nature and that doctrine which teaches us we must deny ourselves and be saved by another. The soul must relish before it can digest.
Doctrine | Knowledge | Nature | Opposition | Soul |
As the Spanish proverb says, He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.
Attainment | Commerce | Elegance | Happy | Knowledge | Study | Time | Commerce |
Was driving through the countryside today with some people who insisted upon frequent recourse to a roadmap in order to discover, as they put it, Just where they were. Reflected that for my part I generally have a pretty shrewd idea of just where I am; I am enclosed in the somewhat vulnerable fortress which is my body, and from that uneasy stronghold I make such sorties as I deem advisable into the realm about me. These people seemed to think that whizzing through space in a car really altered the universe for them, but they were wrong; each one remained right in the centre of his private universe, which is the only field of knowledge of which he has any direct experience.
Knowledge | Order | People | Right | Space | Universe | Think |
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Enough | Imagination | Important | Knowledge |
The things for which life is valuable are the satisfactions which come from the improvement of knowledge and the exercise of piety.
Improvement | Knowledge | Life | Life |
Good science requires distinguishing between "felt knowledge" and knowledge arising out of testable observations. "I am sure" is a mental sensation, not a testable conclusion. Put hunches, gut feelings, and intuitions into the suggestion box. Let empiric methods shake out the good from bad suggestions.
Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
There is no knowledge that is not power.
You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door.
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
A Child My Choice - Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled. I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His; While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss. Love's sweetest mark, laud's highest theme, man's most desired light, To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight. He mine by gift, I His by debt, thus each to other due; First friend He was, best friend He is, all times will try Him true. Though young, yet wise; though small, yet strong; though man, yet God He is: As wise, He knows; as strong, He can; as God, He loves to bless. His knowledge rules, His strength defends, His love doth cherish all; His birth our joy, His life our light, His death our end of thrall. Alas! He weeps, He sighs, He pants, yet do His angels sing; Out of His tears, His sighs and throbs, doth bud a joyful spring. Almighty Babe, whose tender arms can force all foes to fly, Correct my faults, protect my life, direct me when I die!
Angels | Birth | Choice | Death | Folly | Force | Friend | God | Heart | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Praise | Strength | Will | God | Child |
Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
I only hope that when I am free, as they are free to go in quest, of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life, it may not seem better to me to rest.
Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
My Library - Like prim Professor of a College I primed my shelves with books of knowledge; And now I stand before them dumb, Just like a child that sucks its thumb, And stares forlorn and turns away, With dolls or painted bricks to play. They glour at me, my tomes of learning. You dolt! they jibe; you undiscerning Moronic oaf, you make a fuss, With highbrow swank selecting us; Saying: I'll read you all some day' - And now you yawn and turn away. Unwanted wait we with our store Of facts and philosophic lore; The scholarship of all the ages Snug packed within our uncut pages; The mystery of all mankind In part revealed - but you are blind. You have no time to read, you tell us; Oh, do not think that we are jealous Of all the trash that wins your favour, The flimsy fiction that you savour: We only beg that sometimes you Will spare us just an hour or two. For all the minds that went to make us Are dust if folk like you forsake us, And they can only live again By virtue of your kindling brain; In magic print they packed their best: Come - try their wisdom to digest… Said I: Alas! I am not able; I lay my cards upon the table, And with deep shame and blame avow I am too old to read you now; So I will lock you in glass cases And shun your sad, reproachful faces. My library is noble planned, Yet in it desolate I stand; And though my thousand books I prize, Feeling a witling in their eyes, I turn from them in weariness To wallow in the Daily Press. For, oh, I never, never will The noble field of knowledge till: I pattern words with artful tricks, As children play with painted bricks, And realize with futile woe, Nothing I know - nor want to know. My library has windowed nooks; And so I turn from arid books To vastitude of sea and sky, And like a child content am I With peak and plain and brook and tree, Crying: Behold! the books for me: Nature, be thou my Library!
Blame | Books | Children | Knowledge | Magic | Mystery | Play | Shame | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Words | Child | Old | Think |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
O Lord, who shall requite Thy goodness? For Thou hast placed the soul in the body to vivify it, And to teach and show it the path of life And to deliver it from evil; Thou hast formed man from a pinch of clay and breathed into him a soul, And didst impart to him the spirit of wisdom Whereby man is divided from the beasts That he may ascend to a higher sphere. Thou hast him enclosed in Thy universe, And directest and beholdest his deeds from without, And all that would conceal him from Thee Thou beholdest from within and without.
Knowledge | Nature | Power | Punishment | Soul | Space | Wisdom |
The woods were made for the hunter of dreams, The brooks for the fishers of song; To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game The streams and the woods belong. There are thoughts that moan from the soul of pine And thoughts in a flower bell curled; And thoughts that are blown with scent of the fern Are as new and as old as the world.
Beauty | Good | Knowledge | Love | Need | Passion | Will | Woman | Words | Beauty | Child |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Who shall utter Thy mighty deeds, For Thou madest a division of the ball of the earth into twain, half dry land, half water, And didst surround the water with the sphere of air, In which the wind turneth and turneth in its going, And resteth in its circuits, And didst encompass the air with the sphere of fire, And the foundations of these four elements are but one foundation, And their sources one, And from it they issue and are renewed, "And from thence was it separated and became four heads."
Art | Existence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Power | Universe | Wisdom | Art |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Who shall understand Thy mysteries? For thou hast encompassed the second sphere with a third sphere, And therein a brightness (Venus) like a queen amid her hosts, And her garments adorned like a bride’s, And in eleven months she fulfilleth her circuit, And her body to that of the earth is as one to thirty and seven, To those who know her secret and understand her. And she reneweth in the world, by the will of her Creator, Peace and prosperity, dancing and delight, And songs and shouts of joy, And the love-cries of bride and bridegroom on their canopies. And it is she conspireth the ripening of fruit And other vegetation, "From the precious things of the fruits of the sun, And from the precious things of the yield of the moons."
Deviation | Earth | Force | Knowledge | Man | Power | Prudence | Prudence | Riches | World | Riches |