This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Now is life very solid or very shifting? I am haunted by the two contradictions. This has gone on forever; goes down to the bottom of the world -- this moment I stand on. Also it is transitory, flying, diaphanous. I shall pass like a cloud on the waves. Perhaps it may be that though we change, one flying after another, so quick, so quick, yet we are somehow successive and continuous we human beings, and show the light through. But what is the light?
Desire |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Light never battles darkness, so whenever you see a fight it is always between two dark forces.
Desire |
I subdue enemies with the help of my 'knowledge' and 'enlighten' near and dear ones.
Desire |
When God becomes merciful, He leads you to meet the True Guru; all peace is in the Name of the Lord.
Desire |
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
Well may he be content to live a hundred years who acts without attachment who works his work with earnestness, but without desire, not yearning for its fruits – he, and he alone. – Isha Upanishad
Death | Desire | Earth | Fulfillment | Heart | Life | Life | Mortal | Time | Will | Work |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
You could have golden treasure buried beneath your feet, and walk over it again and again, yet never find it because you don't realize it's there. Just so, all beings live every moment in the city of the Divine, but never find the Divine because it is hidden by the veil of illusion. - Chandogya Upanishad.
I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.
Life cannot be destroyed for good, neither... can history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy lid of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the lid will no longer hold and will start to crack. This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique ... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.
The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
That the threat is now intense is not a reason to abandon our quest for knowledge. It is a reason to hold it more tightly, in spite of the need for action to preserve our freedom, in spite of the distractions of living in turmoil, that it may not be lost or brushed aside by the demands of the hour. We would not neglect our duty to our country and our fellows to strive mightily to preserve our ways and our lives. There is an added duty, not inconsistent, not less. It is the duty to so live that there may be a reason for living, beyond the mere mechanisms of life. It is the duty to carry on, under stress, the search for understanding.
Curiosity | Freedom | Government | Inquiry | Plan | Play | Progress | Government |