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 |
God grant indeed thy words are not for nought! Then shalt thou save me, since for many a day to such a dreadful life I have been brought: nor will I spare with all my heart to pay what man soever takes my grief away; ah! I will love thee, if thou lovest me but well enough my saviour now to be.
Care | Day | Fear | Hate | Hope | Labor | Life | Life | Little | Maxims | Men | Nothing | Pain | People | Rest | Time | Will |
Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving, go no further; come hither; there have been who have found it, and these know the house of fulfillment of craving; these know the cup with the roses around it; these know the world's wound and the balm that hath bound it: cry out, the world heedeth not, "love, lead us home!"
Love is enough: draw near and behold me ye who pass by the way to your rest and your laughter, and are full of the hope of the dawn coming after; for the strong of the world have bought me and sold me and my house is all wasted from threshold to rafter. — pass by me, and hearken, and think of me not!
Blame | Darkness | Hope | Joy | Life | Life | Rest | Terror |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe. This is, many would say, impossible. In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on eat) sumptuous meals while watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them. This, many would say, is equally impossible. You can arrive (mayan arrivan on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were, when you return to your own time (you can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome). This is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible. At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with (mayan meetan con with dinan on when) a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time. This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible. You can visit it as many times as you like (mayan on-visit re onvisiting ... and so on – for further tense correction consult Dr. Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarrassment this usually causes.
Rest |
The real bafflement here is why the media even gives these (9/11 conspiracy theorists) coverage. Compare the two viewpoints. On the one hand we have thousands upon thousands of hours of forensic science, intelligence gathering, and contemporary media. On the other, we have none of these. The two viewpoints are not equally valid. We’re not talking about a religious discussion here, we’re talking about an actual forensic event witnessed by dozens of people. Just because a number of people believe something doesn’t make it a legitimate alternative viewpoint. I’m not trying to evangelize here. If someone manages to come up with some new evidence, such as a warehouse where the government is keeping all the passengers from the planes involved in the attacks, a missile fuselage, or otherwise, I’m more than happy to change my viewpoint. I’d rather be right than win an argument. I’m not holding my breath on this one, though. If the US government couldn’t conspire a way to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to save face, I doubt they’re capable of pulling off 9/11.
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The truth of the matter is, that most English people don't know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.
It is amazing at how small a price may the wedding ring be placed upon a worthless hand; but, by the beauty of our law, what heaps of gold are indispensable to take it off!
Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.
Nature |
Everyone speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.
The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have, moreover, a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to form new wholes of our own creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power, and I apprehend that this is the proper sense of the word, if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter. The operations of imagination are by no means confined to the materials which conception furnishes, but may be equally employed about all the subjects of our knowledge.
Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, and young affection gapes to be his heir; that fair for which love groan'd for and would die, with tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair. Now Romeo is beloved and loves again, alike betwitched by the charm of looks, but to his foe supposed he must complain, and she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks: being held a foe, he may not have access to breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; and she as much in love, her means much less to meet her new-beloved anywhere: but passion lends them power, time means, to meet tempering extremities with extreme sweet.
O now, for ever Farewell the tranquil mind farewell content.
Duke Ellington, fully Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington
You can’t write music right unless you know how the man that’ll play it plays poker.
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, the day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry.
Nature |