This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
Enough | Loneliness |
The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being (Is there a source?). He is still with you, but without relation, isolated in your feeling like one condemned to death or one whom imminent farewell prematurely dedicates to the loneliness which is the final lot of all. Between you and him is distance, uncertainty - care.
Care | Death | Destiny | Journey | Loneliness | Uncertainty |
What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
In the absence of discriminating thoughts, the mind as we know it ceases to exist. Our suffering - our feeling of discomfort, alienation, loneliness - arises because we create a dualistic way of perceiving everything that separates us from the external. When we view the so-called external phenomenal world as distinct from ourselves, then fear arises, fear that we will lose our lives, that we may not continue to exist. Out of that fear come anger, jealousy, greed, hatred, aversion, attachment - all kinds of clinging. All our problems arise out of seeing ourselves as separate entities. We cling to what we perceive as me; my physical body and my ideas, my mind, my thoughts, my understanding, my beliefs, my concepts, my opinions.
Absence | Alienation | Anger | Body | Fear | Greed | Ideas | Jealousy | Loneliness | Mind | Problems | Suffering | Understanding | Will | World |
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
Memory |
Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.
Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |
Commit the Golden Rule to memory - now commit it to life.
Golden Rule | Life | Life | Memory | Rule | Golden Rule |
Imagination I understand to be the representation of an individual thought. Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present.
Belief | Imagination | Individual | Memory | Past | Present | Thought | Understand |
If humanity is to have a hopeful future, there is no escape from the preeminent involvement and responsibility of the single human soul, in all its loneliness and frailty.
Future | Humanity | Loneliness | Responsibility | Soul |
George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways... But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consist in being perceived.
Existence | Ideas | Imagination | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Self | Soul | Spirit | Words |
Gerald Brenan, fully Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan
A bad memory is the mother of invention.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind.
A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Daring | Disease | Loneliness | People |
Your spirit’s life, my brother, is encompassed by loneliness, and were it not for that loneliness and solitude, you would not be you, nor would I be I. Were it not for this loneliness and solitude, I would come to believe on hearing your voice that is was my voice speaking; or seeing your face, that it was myself looking into a mirror.
Life | Life | Loneliness | Solitude | Spirit |
Loneliness is dangerous… because if loneliness does not lead to God, it leads to the devil. It leads to the self.
Devil | God | Loneliness | Self |
Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.