This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite guest.
We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
Where am I getting the brain space to store these words? I'm hoping that maybe my mind has decided to clear out some old negative thoughts and sad memories and replace them with these shiny new words.
The culture of Rome just doesn't match the culture of Yoga, not as far as I can see. In fact, I've decided that Rome and Yoga don't have anything in common at all. Except for the way they both kind of remind you of the word toga.
Cause | Desire | Means | Object | Suffering | Will | Happiness | Think |
Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!
Good | Life | Life | Love | Memoirs | Suffering | Happiness |
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace.
Better | Contentment | Happy | Thought | Youth | Youth | Happiness | Thought |
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
Only they have to weep bitter tears who know what has come to them is the result of their foolish conduct, their ignorant way, their want of proper understanding of life and what love means.
Books | Character | Common Sense | Force | Righteousness | Rites | Salvation | Sense | System | World | Happiness |
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
Angels from the Lord lead and protect us every moment and every moment of every moment.
Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
How happy is the little stone that rambles in the road alone, and doesn't care about careers, and exigencies never fears; whose coat of elemental brown a passing universe put on; and independent as the sun, associates or glows alone, fulfilling absolute decree in casual simplicity.
Hope | Simplicity | Work | Happiness |