This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
There is affection in every employment, and it gives the spirit energy, and keeps the mind intent upon its work or study. This if it be not relaxed, becomes dull, and its earnestness flags,—as salt that has lost its savor, so that it has no pungency or relish; or as bended bow, which unless it be unbent, loses the power that it derives from its elasticity.
It costs me never a stab nor squirm to tread by chance upon a worm. Aha, my little dear, I say, your clan will pay me back one day.
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.
All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.
The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.
A work of art is a corner of nature seen through a temperament.
He wept for truth which was dead, for heaven which was void. Beyond the marble walls and gleaming jeweled altars, the huge plaster Christ had no longer a single drop of blood in its veins.
A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy... It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.
Crime | Duty | History | Insult | Justice | Society | Suffering | Truth | Insult | Society |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Some keep the Sabbath going to church, I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome.
And that wretched creature without hands or feet, who had to be put to bed and fed like a child, that pitiable remnant of a man, whose almost vanished life was nothing more than one scream of pain, cried out in furious indignation: 'What a fool one must be to go and kill oneself!' - 'Joy of Life
The Revolution of 1848 found all the Rougons on the lookout, frustrated by their bad luck, and ready to use any means necessary to advance their cause. They were a family of bandits lying in wait, ready to plunder and steal.
Affront | Deeds | Indignation | Language | Men | Need | Nothing | People | Public | Punishment | Rank | Remorse | Thought | Traitor | Deeds | Thought |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
It was a quiet way - he asked if I was his - I made no answer of the tongue but answer of the eyes - and then he bore me on before this mortal noise with swiftness, as of chariots and distance, as of wheels. This world did drop away as acres from the feet of one that leaneth from balloon upon an ether street. The gulf behind was not, the continents were new - eternity was due. No seasons were to us - it was not night nor morn - but sunrise stopped upon the place and fastened in dawn.
Fate | Hope | Land | Little | Loneliness | Peace | Suffering | Fate |
And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.
Good | Life | Life | People | Promise | Right | Thought | Will | Thought |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
It was not death, for I stood up, and all the dead lie down; it was not night, for all the bells put out their tongues, for noon. It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl, nor fire, for just my marble feet could keep a chancel cool. And yet it tasted like them all; the figures I have seen set orderly, for burial, reminded me of mine, as if my life were shaven and fitted to a frame, and could not breathe without a key; and I was like midnight, some, when everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. But most like chaos,--stopless, cool, without a chance or spar,-- or even a report of land to justify despair.