This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, not from our words, that our religion must be judged.
I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.
Choice | Culture | Failure | Family | Good | Heaven | Occupation | Position | Success | Thought | Failure | Old | Thought |
The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!
Angels | Beginning | Enough | Heaven | Opinion | Prayer | Think |
The doctrine of man finding his true reality in his remembrance of God in whose image he was created, is basically Biblical and was developed by the Church Fathers in connection with the theology of grace, the sacraments, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the surrender of our own will, the “death” of our selfish ego, in order to live in pure love and liberty of spirit, is effected not by our own will (this would be a contradiction in terms!) but by the Holy Spirit. To “recover the divine likeness,” to “surrender to the will of God,” to “live by pure love,” and thus to find peace, is summed up as “union with God in the Spirit,” or “receiving, possessing the Holy Spirit.” This, as the 19th-century Russian hermit, St. Seraphim of Sarov declared, is the whole purpose of the Christian (therefore a fortiori the monastic) life. St. John Chrysostom says: “As polished silver illumined by the rays of the sun radiates light not only from its own nature but also from the radiance of the sun, so a soul purified by the Divine Spirit becomes more brilliant than silver; it both receives the ray of Divine Glory and from itself reflects the ray of this same glory.” Our true rest, love, purity, vision and quiet is not something in ourselves, it is God the Divine Spirit. Thus we do not “possess” rest, but go out of ourselves into him who is our true rest.
Devil | Dreams | Enough | Fear | Grace | Heaven | Light | Means | Men | People | Truth | Will | Intellect |
The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.
Heaven |
Ultimately, these cannot be found anywhere except in the ground of our own being. There in the silent depths, there is no more distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘Not-I’. There is perfect peace, because we are grounded in infinite creative and redemptive Love.
Glory | God | Heaven | Life | Life | Love | Means | Order | Will | World | God |
The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.
There are people one meets in books or in life whom one does not merely observe, meet, or know. A deep resonance of one's entire being is immediately set up with the entire being of the other (Cor ad cor loquitur)—heart speaks to heart in the wholeness of the language of music; true friendship is a kind of singing.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
Our job is not to have faith. We have faith already, whether we want it or not. It comes in our blood from our ancestors who gave their lives for it. Our job is to transport that higher vision that gave them their faith down into our minds, into our personalities, into our words, into our actions in daily life. To make it part of our selves and our world.
Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL
When the absolute Reality is known, it is seen to be without any individual selves, and devoid of any objective forms; All past [mental and physical] actions which lead to hell are instantly wiped away. After the Awakening, there is only vast Emptiness; this vast universe of forms ceases to exist [outside of one's Self]. Here, one sees neither sin nor bliss, neither loss nor gain. In the midst of the eternal Serenity, no questions arise; The dust of ignorance which has accumulated on the unpolished mirror for ages, Is now, and forever, cleared away in the vision of Truth.
Earth | Glory | Guidance | Heaven | Light | Love | Nature | Reason | Soul | Troubles | Guidance | Learn |
He marks, and makes the golden world our own, Content with hands unsoil'd to guard the prize, And keep the store with undesiring eyes. So round the tree, that bore Hesperian gold, The sacred watch lay curl'd in many a fold, His eyes up-rearing to th' untasted prey, The sleepless guardian wasted life away.
Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous while they actually lived. . . . The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast, though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them.
Consolation | Esteem | Freedom | Heaven | Price |
The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd!
Age | Beauty | Books | Children | Cost | Credit | Day | Disdain | Example | Glory | Grace | Heaven | Hope | Kill | Little | Love | Marriage | Nature | Reward | Sense | Silence | Thought | Time | Truth | Wants | Waste | Wisdom | Beauty | Old | Thought |
Ch'ien, fully T'ao Chien or Tao Qian, aka Tao Yuan-ming NULL
Endless yearning crushes a man's heart.
Heaven |
To a Lady Before Marriage - Oh! form'd by Nature, and refin'd by Art, With charms to win, and sense to fix the heart! By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free Thy croud of captives and descend to me? Content in shades obscure to waste thy life, A hidden beauty and a country wife. O! listen while thy summers are my theme, Ah! sooth thy partner in his waking dream! In some small hamlet on the lonely plain, Where Thames, through meadows, rolls his mazy train; Or where high Windsor, thick with greens array'd, Waves his old oaks, and spreads his ample shade, Fancy has figur'd out our calm retreat; Already round the visionary seat Our limes begin to shoot, our flowers to spring, The brooks to murmur, and the birds to sing. Where dost thou lie, thou thinly-peopled green? Thou nameless lawn, and village yet unseen? Where sons, contented with their native ground, Ne'er travell'd further than ten furlongs round; And the tann'd peasant, and his ruddy bride, Were born together, and together died. Where early larks best tell the morning light, And only Philomel disturbs the night, 'Midst gardens here my humble pile shall rise, With sweets surrounded of ten thousand dies; All savage where th' embroider'd gardens end, The haunt of echoes, shall my woods ascend; And oh! if Heaven th' ambitious thought approve, A rill shall warble cross the gloomy grove, A little rill, o'er pebbly beds convey'd, Gush down the steep, and glitter through the glade. What chearing scents those bordering banks exhale! How loud that heifer lows from yonder vale! That thrush how shrill! his note so clear, so high, He drowns each feather'd minstrel of the sky. Here let me trace beneath the purpled morn, The deep-mouth'd beagle, and the sprightly horn; Or lure the trout with well dissembled flies, Or fetch the fluttering partridge from the skies. Nor shall thy hand disdain to crop the vine, The downy peach, or flavour'd nectarine; Or rob the bee-hive of its golden hoard, And bear th' unbought luxuriance to thy board. Sometimes my books by day shall kill the hours, While from thy needle rise the silken flowers, And thou, by turns, to ease my feeble sight, Resume the volume, and deceive the night. Oh! when I mark thy twinkling eyes opprest, Soft whispering, let me warn my love to rest; Then watch thee, charm'd, while sleep locks every sense, And to sweet Heaven commend thy innocence. Thus reign'd our fathers o'er the rural fold, Wise, hale, and honest in the days of old; Till courts arose, where substance pays for show, And specious joys are bought with real woe. See Flavia's pendants, large, well-spread, and right, The ear that wears them hears a fool each night: Mark how the embroider'd colonel sneaks away, To shun the withering dame that made him gay; That knave, to gain a title, lost his fame; That rais'd his credit by a daughter's shame; This coxcomb's ribband cost him half his land, And oaks, unnumber'd, bought that fool a wand. Fond man, as all his sorrows were too few, Acquires strange wants that nature never knew, By midnight lamps he emulates the day, And sleeps, perverse, the chearful suns away; From goblets high-embost, his wine must glide, Found his clos'd sight the gorgeous curtain slide; Fruits ere their time to grace his pomp must rise, And three untasted courses glut his eyes. For this are nature's gentle calls withstood, The voice of conscience, and the bonds of blood; This wisdom thy reward for every pain, And this gay glory all thy mighty gain. Fair phantoms woo'd and scorn'd from age to age, Since bards began to laugh, and priests to rage. And yet, just curse on man's aspiring kind, Prone to ambition, to example blind, Our children's children shall our steps pursue, And the same errours be for ever new. Mean while in hope a guiltless country swain, My reed with warblings chears the imagin'd plain. Hail humble shades, where truth and silence dwell! The noisy town and faithless court farewell! Farewell ambition, once my darling flame! The thirst of lucre, and the charm of fame! In life's by-road, that winds through paths unknown, My days, though number'd, shall be all my own. Here shall they end, (O! might they twice begin) And all be white the Fates intend to spin.
Blessings | Fury | Heaven | Lord | Man | Nations | Nature | Peace | Pleasure | Pride | Rage | Sacred | Style | Learn | Think |
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released From the most squalid cellerage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable-- The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light-- Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change, Wherever his evil mandate run and range, Into a dire intensity of life, A craftsman at his bench, he settles down To the grim job of throttling London Town. So, by a jealous lightlessness beset That might have oppressed the dragons of old time Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted City. prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labryrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting, Rent in the stuff of a material dark, Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; Working through wicked airs and deadly dews That make the laden robber grin askance At the good places in his black romance, And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose Go pinched and pined to bed Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey. Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, The old Father-River flows, His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot In the squalor of the universal shore: His voices sounding through the gruesome air As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: The while his children, the brave ships, No more adventurous and fair, Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, But infamously enchanted, Huddle together in the foul eclipse, Or feel their course by inches desperately, As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, From sinister reach to reach out -- out -- to sea. And Death the while -- Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, Death in his threadbare working trim-- Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, And with expert, inevitable hand Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: Thus signifying unto old and young, However hard of mouth or wild of whim, 'Tis time -- 'tis time by his ancient watch -- to part From books and women and talk and drink and art. And you go humbly after him To a mean suburban lodging: on the way To what or where Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: And you -- how should you care So long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down To the black job of burking London Town?
Daughter | Dread | Earth | Faith | Heaven | Joy | Lord | World | Old |