This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The new ardor which burns in his breast consumes in its glow the lower noes which formerly beset him, and keeps him immune against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature. Magnanimities once impossible are now easy; paltry conventionalities and mean incentives once tyrannical hold no sway. The stone wall inside of him has fallen, the hardness in his heart has broken down. The rest of us can, I think, imagine this by recalling our state of feeling in those temporary melting moods into which either the trials of real life, or the theatre, or a novel sometimes throws us. Especially if we weep! For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading. With most of us the customary hardness quickly returns, but not so with saintly persons. Many saints, even as energetic ones as Teresa and Loyola, have possessed what the church traditionally reveres as a special grace, the so-called gift of tears. In these persons the melting mood seems to have held almost uninterrupted control. And as it is with tears and melting moods, so it is with other exalted affections. Their reign may come by gradual growth or by a crisis; but in either case it may have come to stay.
Action | Faith | Man | Nature | Necessity | Present | Truth | Will |
Voices of the glorified urge us onward. They who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, "Go forward!" "Come up higher!"
Truth |
It is a beautiful necessity of our nature to love something.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Well, sir, I think it's just as well that they are being phased out of the war effort, and that we are now going to detonate the supernova bomb. In the very short time since we were released from the time envelope-' 'Get to the point''The robots aren't enjoying it, sir.''What?''The war sir, it seems to be getting them down there's a certain world-weariness.''Well, that's all right, they're meant to be helping to destroy it.' 'yes, well they're finding it difficult, sir. They are afflicted with a certain lassitude. They're just finding it hard to get behind the job. They lack oomph.''What are you trying to say?' 'Well, I think they're very depressed about something, sir.' 'What on Krikkit are you talking about?' 'Well, in a few skirmishes they've recently, it seems that they go into battle, raise their weapons to fire and suddenly think, why bother? What, cosmically speaking, is it all about? And they just seem to get a little tired and a little grim.' 'And then what do they do?' 'Er, quadratic equations mostly, sir. Fiendishly difficult ones by all accounts. And then they sulk.' 'Sulk?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Whoever heard of a robot sulking?' 'I don't know, sir.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!
Impression | People | Truth |
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.
Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.
Truth |
There are few good women who do not tire of their role.
Truth |
Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing.
O how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have, and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again. Henry VIII (Wolsey at III, ii)
Beauty | Looks | Play | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Beauty |
O, call back yesterday, did time return, And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men! To-day, to-day, unhappy day too late, O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state; For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead, Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispersed, and fled.
Attention | Ends | Men | Music | Taste | Truth | Words | Youth | Youth |
Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One, two; why, then ‘tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that: you mar all with this starting. Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh! Lady Macbeth, Scene I
Truth |
Any style formed in imitation of some model must be affected and straight-laced.
Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL
Underlying great doubt there is great satori, where there is thorough questioning there will be thoroughgoing experience of awakening.
In the same winter quarter, beginning in January, 1896, I taught a class for the Disciples Divinity House, in the divinity school of the university, on the theology of Alexander Campbell. This enabled me to work over again the relation of his thought to that of John Lock, which had so much interested me while I was working on my thesis the previous year. With a class of eight graduate students it was possible to have reports and discussions on various problems. Our excitement ran high, for the “discovery†of the relation between Campbell and Locke gave new meaning to Disciple history and placed it in a stream of thought that was influencing modern science and philosophy with what Locke himself called “a new way of ideas.†It was the empirical and pragmatic temper applied in religious matters. This meant not only a lessened emphasis upon traditional theology and speculative metaphysics but a refection of their assumptions and methods. Like Locke, Campbell also rejected the “inner light†and “enthusiasm†as grounds for religious assurance. Both held to the possibility of revelation, but both insisted that any alleged revelation must be brought to the test of reason.
Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars, - not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment seat.
Fear | Scepticism | Science | Truth | Universe |
Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL
Once a person is able to achieve true singlemindedness in his practice and smash apart the old nest... into which he has settled... Wisdom immediately appears... and the all-discerning Fivefold Eye opens wide.