This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
"Can’t help it? Nonsense! What we are is up to us. Our bodies are like gardens and our willpower is like the gardener. Depending on what we plant—weeds or lettuce, or one kind of herb rather than a variety, the garden will either be barren and useless, or rich and productive. If we didn’t have rational minds to counterbalance our emotions and desires, our bodily urges would take over. We’d end up in ridiculous situations. Thankfully, we have reason to cool our raging lusts. In my opinion, what you call love is just an offshoot of lust. Othello, Act I, Scene 3" - William Shakespeare
"Our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do." - William James
"The inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. . . Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withall, they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them. . . The part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself." - William James
"The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may." - William James
"It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold." - William (Morley Punshon) McFee
"Dawn talks to day over dew-gleaming flowers, night flies away" - William Morris
"Most people I’ve talked to are convinced that they’re not getting valuable information from news media anymore. I’m not talking about tinfoil-hatters either, these are intelligent people who believe their news media has failed them." - Drew Curtis
"Ouch! In your eyes there is a greater danger than in twenty daggers of your relatives. Look at me sweetly, and is enough to make me invulnerable to hate them." - William Shakespeare
"If wives suppress not contempt for husbands, then it follows that such wives rebuke and scold their husbands. If husbands stop not short of anger, then they are certain to beat their wives. The correct relationship between husband and wife is based upon harmony and intimacy, and conjugal love is grounded in proper union. Should actual blows be dealt, how could matrimonial relationship be preserved? Should sharp words be spoken, how could conjugal love exist? If love and proper relationship both be destroyed, then husband and wife are divided." - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
"Those who had some shame are dead." - Egyptian Proverbs
"How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart." - Eliza Cook
"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men." - Emile Zola
"He is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and we were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"What exists for us, what we consider as existing is not a reality hidden behind phenomena that appear as images or signs of this reality. The world of phenomena it-self makes up the being of our concrete life." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"You are not happy because you are well. You are well because you are happy. You are not depressed because trouble has come to you, but trouble has come to you because you are depressed. You can change your thoughts and feelings, and then the outer things will come to correspond, and indeed there is no other way of working." - Emmet Fox
"When you begin your work, nothing exists. When it is finished it looks as if it just happened, spontaneously, effortlessly, convincingly. It looks as though it had been there all along." - Eva Zeisel
"When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being." - Ernest Becker
"I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"We need but mention the mighty influence which irrational dogmas still exercise on the elementary education of our youth, we need but mention that the state yet permits the existence of cloisters and of celibacy, the most immoral and baneful ordinance of the “only-saving” church; we need but mention that the civilized state yet divides the most important parts of the civil year in accordance with church festivals; that in many countries it allows the public order to be disturbed by church processions, and so on." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"outward realization must occur automatically, in no further need of the controlling or reflecting intelligence." - Eugen Herrigel
"Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves." - Eustace Budgell
"For this reason a man truly modest is as much so when he is alone as in company, and as subject to a blush in his closet as when the eyes of multitudes are upon him." - Eustace Budgell
"The future of history belongs to the poor and exploited." - Gustavo Gutiérrez
"The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.' 'And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both no and yes.' 'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." -
"Each day before the end of eve she sought her lover, nor would him leave, until the stars were dimmed, and day came glimmering eastward silver-grey. Then trembling-veiled she would appear, and dance before him, half in fear; there flitting just before his feet she gently chid with laughter sweet: 'Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me! For fain thy dancing I would see!" -