This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"It is better to travel well than to arrive." - Tripitaka or Tipitaka NULL
"The whole purport of literature... is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"Yes. Now you know. Now you know. That's what it was to be alive, to move about in a cloud of ignorance, to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those-- of those about you, to spend and waste time as if you had a million years, to be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion or another. Now you know, that's the 'happy' existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts." - William James
"He that is endeavoring to subdue, and root out of his mind, all those passions of pride, envy and ambition, which religion opposes, is doing more to make himself happy, even in this life than he that is contriving means to indulge them." - William Law
"The bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and many a blithe heart dances under coarse wool." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"When the angels present themselves, the devils abscond." - Egyptian Proverbs
"Sean said: My father is necessary to learn meditation nirvana, could actually save your life, it will teach you how to live your mind. His father turned to him and said gently: But mainly mental inhabitant son." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"The beautiful seems right by force of beauty and the feeble wrong because of weakness." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Thy lips which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Unlike we are, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies... Thou, bethink thee, art a guest for queens to social pageantries, with gages from a hundred brighter eyes than tears even can make mine... what hast though to do with looking from the lattice-lights at me, a poor, tired, wandering singer." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Let the good service of well-deservers be never rewarded with loss. Let their thanks be such as may encourage more strivers for the like." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Angelic happiness is in service, from service, and according to service." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"Charity alone, or love and compassion, is what joins the Lord and a person together." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"Men live a moral life, either from regard to the Diving Being, or from regard to the opinion of the people in the world; and when a moral life is practised out of regard to the Divine Being, it is a spiritual life. Both appear alike in their outward form; but in their inward, they are completely different. The one saves a man, but the other does not; for he that leads a moral life out of regard to the Divine Being is led by him, but he who does so from regard to the opinion of people in the world is led by himself." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"So far any one shuns evils, so far as he does good." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"The church of the Lord is spread over all the globe, and is thus universal; and all those are in it who have lived in the good of charity in accordance with their religion." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads were toward eternity." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"He'll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to loved or hated again." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I went about my house hold duties, convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and that lodged in my body." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Though earth and man were gone, and suns and universes ceased to be, and Thou wert left alone, every existence would exist in Thee." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering away your life on silly trifles." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Many people seem to think that the spiritual life necessarily requires a definite and exacting plan of study. It does not. But it does require a definite plan of life; and courage in sticking to the plan, not for merely days or weeks, but for years." - Evelyn Underhill