This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
The soul should always stand ajar, that if the heaven inquire, he will not be obliged to wait, or shy of troubling her. Depart, before the host has slid the bolt upon the door, to seek for the accomplished guest, -- her visitor no more.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
And cried for mamma, at every turn'-I added, 'and trembled if a country lad heaved his fist against you, and sat at home all day for a shower of rain.-Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass, and I'll let you see what you should wish. Do you mark those two lines between your eyes, and those thick brows, that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle, and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies? Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes-Don't get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet, hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers.' 'In other words, I must wish for Edgar Linton's great blue eyes, and even forehead,' he replied. 'I do - and that won't help me to them.' 'A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,' I continued, 'if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing, and combing, and sulking - tell me whether you don't think yourself rather handsome? I'll tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week's income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors, and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!
Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.
Birth | Body | Earth | Enjoyment | Guarantee | Heart | Human nature | Individual | Liberty | Men | Mind | Nature | Observation | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Restraint | Soul | Study | Teach | Wickedness | Will | World |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?
God | Heart | Love | Nothing | Right | Satan | Soul | Will | God | Forgive |
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.
Body | Earth | Fear | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Pain | Religion | Self-denial | Sorrow | Soul | Struggle |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
If he were in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that became my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him... Never would have missed her company, while she wanted. At the moment the affection disappeared, I would have ripped the heart and drank his blood. But until then... would have let me die in pieces before touching a hair on his head.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Although he loved her with all the strength of his miserable being, not love as much in eighty years as I do in a day
Soul |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! How can I bear it? was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, so sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; and, deepening still the dreamlike charm, wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, how could I seek the empty world again?
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk. When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress, even in seven months - many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms. I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor - the middle one, gray, and half buried in heath - Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss, creeping up its foot - Heathcliff's still bare. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
What matters it, that, all around, danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, if but within our bosom's bound we hold a bright, untroubled sky, warm with ten thousand mingled rays of suns that know no winter days?
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I will walk where my own nature would be leading.
Soul |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I'm now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.