This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and forms of living and praying. But this kind of praying, which takes all its thoughts and words only from the state of our hearts, makes it impossible for us to be strangers to ourselves. The strength of every sin, the power of every evil temper, the most secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of any or all our virtues, is with a noonday clearness forced to be seen, as soon as the heart is made our prayer book, and we pray nothing, but according to what we read, and find there.
Distinction | Glory | God | Grace | Haste | Man | Nature | Piety | Religion | Service | Spirit | Will | God | Old |
Fear and Hope — those are the names of the two great passions which rule the race of man, and with which revolutionists have to deal; to give hope to the many oppressed and fear to the few oppressors, that is our business; if we do the first and give hope to the many, the few must be frightened by their hope; otherwise we do not want to frighten them; it is not revenge we want for poor people, but happiness; indeed, what revenge can be taken for all the thousands of years of the sufferings of the poor?
Light |
Love is enough: though the world be a-waning and the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining, though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover the gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder, and this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter; the void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter these lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real and why only a hundred thousand Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.
By God I will not tell you more to-day, judge any way you will -- what matters it
Drowsy I lie, no folk at my command, who once was called the Lady of the Land; who might have bought a kingdom with a kiss, yea, half the world with such a sight as this.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.
The good or the bad fortune of men depends not less upon their own dispositions than upon fortune.
One that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.
Poor and content is rich, and rich enough, but riches fineless is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor. Good god, the souls of all my tribe defend from jealousy! Othello the Moor of Venice (Iago at III, iii)
He was himself and he had lost the speed he started with, and he was left behind.
Those monks who went to the Tang to study before spent much time in that country and all were without mention of this, and now you write stating that in Dali 4 (769) they initiated a MahÄyÄna high seat where the bodhisattva MañjuÅ›rÄ« is placed in all temple dining halls across the land. From then until Zhenyuan 22 (806)3, exactly thirty-eight years have passed. It corresponds to Enryaku 25 (806) in the country of Great Japan. As they say, 'Looking at outward appearances unaware of their contents.'
And thus we all are nighing the truth we fear to know: death will end our crying for friends that come and go.
Modest expression is a beautiful setting to the diamond of talent and genius.
Public feeling now is apt to side with the persecuted, and our modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered with roses as with coals.
Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.