This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul." - Simone Weil
"The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life." - Simone Weil
"[And, most clearly, this Spirit is the one] from whom alone good fortune is to be hoped for, to whom alone flight from adversity is to be taken, and of whom alone supplication is to be made for anything whatsoever. Truly, then, this Spirit not only is God but is the only God—ineffably three and one." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
"An English traveler relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects—in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something." - Stephan Jay Gould
"But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"The American people abhor a vacuum." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"We must also be careful to avoid ingesting toxins in the form of violent TV programs, video games, movies, magazines, and books. When we watch that kind of violence, we water our own negative seeds, or tendencies, and eventually we will think and act out of those seeds." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"By Manners, I mean not here decency of behaviour; as how one man should salute another, or how a man should wash his mouth, or pick his teeth before company, and such other points of the small morals; but those qualities of mankind that concern their living together in peace and unity. To which end we are to consider that the felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such finis ultimus [utmost aim] nor summum bonum [greatest good] as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand." - Thomas Hobbes
"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years." - Thomas Jefferson
"In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion." - Thomas Paine
"It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engages." - Thomas Paine
"The word of God is the creation we behold and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man." - Thomas Paine
"Unlike Christian-Jewish dialogue, whose sour grapes have set our teeth on edge, Jewish-Muslim dialogue will be fruitful. Certainly it will serve notice on the Arabs that their Jewish “cousins” have broken out of their Western provincialism. If henceforth Jews will assign to Jewish-Muslim dialogue the importance that is its due, the Arabs, in whose nationalism religion is as important as it is in Jewish nationalism, will eventually – and perhaps sooner than cold-headed realists will dare expect – rediscover that the Jews are their brothers, descendants of Abraham’s second son. " - Trude Weiss-Rosmarin
"A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen - Dear Anna, -- Between friend and friend, Prose answers every common end; Serves, in a plain and homely way, To express the occurrence of the day; Our health, the weather, and the news, What walks we take, what books we choose, And all the floating thoughts we find Upon the surface of the mind. But when a poet takes the pen, Far more alive than other men, He feels a gentle tingling come Down to his finger and his thumb, Derived from nature's noblest part, The centre of a glowing heart: And this is what the world, who knows No flights above the pitch of prose, His more sublime vagaries slighting, Denominates an itch for writing. No wonder I, who scribble rhyme To catch the triflers of the time, And tell them truths divine and clear, Which, couched in prose, they will not hear; Who laboured hard to allure and draw The loiterers I never saw, Should feel that itching and that tingling With all my purpose intermingling, To your intrinsic merit true, When called to address myself to you. Mysterious are His ways, whose power Brings forth that unexpected hour, When minds, that never met before, Shall meet, unite, and part no more; It is the allotment of the skies, The hand of the Supremely Wise, That guides and governs our affections, And plans and orders our connections: Directs us in our distant road, And marks the bounds of our abode. Thus we were settled when you found us, Peasants and children all around us, Not dreaming of so dear a friend, Deep in the abyss of Silver-End. Thus Martha, even against her will, Perched on the top of yonder hill; And you, though you must needs prefer The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre, Are come from distant Loire, to choose A cottage on the banks of Ouse. This page of Providence quite new, And now just opening to our view, Employs our present thoughts and pains To guess, and spell, what it contains: But day by day, and year by year, Will make the dark enigma clear; And furnish us, perhaps, at last, Like other scenes already past, With proof, that we, and our affairs, Are part of a Jehovah's cares: For God unfolds, by slow degrees, The purport of his deep decrees, Sheds every hour a clearer light In aid of our defective sight; And spreads, at length, before the soul A beautiful and perfect whole, Which busy man's inventive brain Toils to anticipate, in vain. Say, Anna, had you never grown The beauties of a rose full blown, Could you, though luminous your eye, By looking on the bud descry, Or guess, with a prophetic power, The future splendour of the flower? Just so, the Omnipotent, who turns The system of a world's concerns, From mere minutiae can educe Events of most important use, And bid a dawning sky display The blaze of a meridian day. The works of man tend, one and all, As needs they must, from great to small; And vanity absorbs at length The monuments of human strength. But who can tell how vast the plan Which this day's incident began? Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion For our dim-sighted observation; It passed unnoticed, as the bird That cleaves the yielding air unheard, And yet may prove, when understood, A harbinger of endless good. Not that I deem, or mean to call Friendship a blessing cheap or small; But merely to remark, that ours, Like some of nature's sweetest flowers, Rose from a seed of tiny size, That seemed to promise no such prize; A transient visit intervening, And made almost without a meaning, (Hardly the effect of inclination), Produced a friendship, then begun, That has cemented us in one; And placed it in our power to prove, By long fidelity and love, That Solomon has wisely spoken,-- 'A threefold cord is not soon broken.' " - William Cowper
"The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, it is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day." - Walter Lippmann
"Interiority and harmony are characteristics of human consciousness. The consciousness of each human person is totally interiorized, known to the person from the inside and inaccessible to any other person directly from the inside. Everyone who says "I" means something different by it from what every other person means. What is "I" to me is only "you" to you. And this "I" incorporates experience into itself by "getting it all together". Knowledge is ultimately not a fractioning but a unifying phenomenon, a striving for harmony." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"Authentic empowerment is the knowing that you are on purpose, doing God's work, peacefully and harmoniously." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Realize there is no such thing as failure." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"How many of the ways (disciplines, exercises, practices) recommended as helpful, or even necessary, for the attainment of Satori are not in fact consequences of that state erroneously suggested as means?" - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"I have only one object in writing books: to demonstrate that there could not be anyone to do it." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"One must know that one is not in order to be able to understand that we are." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"Whoever thinks as, from, or on behalf of, an entity which he believes himself to be, the more so if he tries to work on himself, by, with, or for such an entity - which is only a concept in mind - has not yet begun to understand what it is all about." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"No great feat is going to happen to change all this; you're going to have to humble yourself to be willing to do it one little bit at a time. You can't make people do this. What you have to do is notice that they're already doing it." - Wendell Berry
"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"One is always at home in one's past." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do God and Devil combine to form a live dog?" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"Silence in Action - Sensitivity and Pain - To live requires energy and fearlessness, but we are brought up in a pleasure-hunting human race, and pain is something to be afraid of, to be driven away completely, to protect oneself from. But it is the pain and pleasure - the duality - together that make the whole, the wholeness of life. The more sensitive you are and the more you live from the depth of your being, the more vulnerable you are to life. The more sensitive you are and the more capable of loving human beings, the more you will be hurt; there is more sorrow, there is more pain. Psychological hurts, pain and sorrow accompany the sensitivity, intelligence and love. Love and sorrow go together. So, if there is physical or psychological pain, you live with it - not out of despair, not out of self-pity, not out of any weakness. You live with it because it is part of life, it is an expression of life." - Vimala Thakar
"In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost." - Václav Havel
"Satan's friendship reaches to the prison door." - Turkish Proverbs
"No policy is sustainable without a public that broadly understands why it's necessary and sees the world the way you do..." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
"As yet, it must be owned, this daring expectation is but feebly reflected in our books. In looking over any collection of American poetry, for instance, one is struck with the fact that it is not so much faulty as inadequate. Emerson set free the poetic intuition of America, Hawthorne its imagination. Both looked into the realm of passion, Emerson with distrust, Hawthorne with eager interest; but neither thrilled with its spell, and the American poet of passion is yet to come. How tame and manageable are wont to be the emotions of our bards, how placid and literary their allusions! There is no baptism of fire; no heat that breeds excess. Yet it is not life that is grown dull, surely; there are as many secrets in every heart, as many skeletons in every closet, as in any elder period of the world’s career. It is the interpreters of life who are found wanting, and that not on this soil alone, but throughout the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not just to say, as someone has said, that our language has not in this generation produced a love-song, for it has produced Browning; but was it in England or in Italy that he learned to sound the depths of all human emotion?" - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it." - Thucydides NULL
"Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries." - Thucydides NULL
"How many writers of fiction do you think are committed to that?" - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
"I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"From denial to denial, his existence is diminished: vaguer and more unreal than a syllogism of sighs, how could he still be a creature of flesh and blood? Anemic, he rivals the Idea itself; he has abstracted himself from his ancestors, from his friends, from every soul and himself; in his veins, once turbulent, rests a light from another world. Liberated from what he has lived, unconcerned by what he will live; he demolishes the signposts on all his roads, and wrests himself from the dials of all time. I shall never meet myself again, he decides, happy to turn his last hatred against himself, happier still to annihilate - in his forgiveness - all beings, all things." - Emil M. Cioran
"Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory." - Emil M. Cioran
"We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage." - Emil M. Cioran
"Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"The only part of our religion that is real is the part we express in our daily lives. Ideals that we do not act out in practice are mere abstract theories and have no real meaning. Actually, such pretended ideals are a serious detriment, because they drug the soul into a false sense of security. If you want to receive any benefit from your religion you must practice it, and the place to practice it is right here where you are, and the time to do it is now. Divine Love is the only real power. If you can realize this fact even dimly it will begin to heal and harmonize every condition in your life within a few hours. The way to realize this fact is to express it in every word you speak, in every business transaction, in every social activity, and, in fact, in every phase of your life. An early New Thought writer said: "Knead love into the bread you bake; wrap strength and courage in the parcel you tie for the woman with the weary face; hand trust and candor with the coin you pay to the man with the suspicious eyes." This is beautifully said, and it sums up the Practice of the Presence of God." - Emmet Fox
"Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture." - Ernest Becker