This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
God . . . sanctified the Sabbath, when he selected it out of the course of other days, and set it apart from the common employments and services of life; ordaining that the spiritual concernments of his glory and our salvation should be therein especially transacted. And this is that blessing which God hath conferred upon this day. For what other benefit is a day capable of, but only, that, when the other six days, like the unregarded vulgar of the year, were to be employed in the low and sordid drudgery of earthly affairs. This Seventh Day God hath raised from the dunghill, and set upon the throne, appointing it, according to Ignatius's phrase, "The prince and sovereign of days," exempting it form all servile works; and designing it for such spiritual and celestial employments, that, were it observed according to God's command, eternity itself would not have much advantage above it, but only that it is longer. So that, in the ring of the week, the Sabbath is the jewel, the most excellent and precious of days.
Conscience | God | God |
None have assurance at all times. As in a walk that is shaded with trees and checkered with light and shadow, some tracks and paths in it are dark and others are sunshine. Such is usually the life of the most assured.
Conscience | God | God |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.
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.
Absence | Consciousness | Death | Evil | Means | Meditation | Men | Power |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.
Conscience | Time | Think |
It doesn't matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally thought to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which might otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the deception of others; all one has to do to obtain the desired results is to impute suitable values to the immeasurable costs and benefits. The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking: with is worse, and destructive of civilization, is the pretense that everything has a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.
Compassion | Evil | Little | Work |
Everything that I think that I need to do, is all only in order to propel me to some place, that when I get there I think I will be happier. So, everything that I am doing, no matter what it is, all of my lists of rights and wrongs, are all about me getting to a manifestation, that I believe I will then be happier...So, why don't I take a short cut and just be happy?
Evil |
When a man does not form connections, it is going to be the point considered, but a woman whom no one seems to have failed to attach any part.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.
Death | Equanimity | Eternal | Evil | Fear | Grace | Life | Life | Men | Reward | Will |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earthÂ…and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the readerÂ’s attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.
Evil | Freedom | Happy | History | People | Purpose | Purpose |