This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
Mind |
M. C. Richards, fully Mary Caroline Richards
Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? It is a frightening and sacred moment. There is no return. One's life is charged forever. It is the fire that gives us our shape.
Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.
The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this Me, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.
You tell me to stand still, but I am not walking," he shouted, "whereas you who are walking say you are still. How is it that you are standing still but I am not?" The Buddha turned round. "My legs move but my mind is still," he said."Your legs are still but your mind moves all the time in a fire of anger, hatred, and feverish desire. Therefore, I am still but you are not.
Maitri Upanishad or Maitrayaniya Upanishad
As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.
Self |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.
Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It's our goal in life to find it and keep it lit.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.
Civilization | Discovery | Discovery |
Mechthild of Magdeburg, also Mechtild NULL
A fish cannot drown in water, A bird does not fall in air. In the fire of creation, God doesn't vanish: The fire brightens. Each creature God made must live in its own true nature; How could I resist my nature, That lives for oneness with God?
A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
LOVE is essentially self-communicative: those who do not have it catch it from those who have it.... No amount of rites, rituals, ceremonies, worship, meditation, penance and remembrance can produce love in themselves. None of these is necessarily a sign of love. On the contrary, those who sigh loudly and weep and wail have yet to experience love. Love sets on fire the one who finds it. At the same time it seals his lips so that no smoke comes out.
Experience | Love | Time |
Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell
Whether you’ve found your calling, or if you’re still searching, passion should be the fire that drives your life’s work.
Passion |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
All I know is that while I’m asleep, I’m never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories — and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There’s only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I’ve ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there’s very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Beauty in a good woman is like fire at a distance or a sharp sword; the one does not burn, or the other wound, those who come not too close.
Mikhail Naimy, also spelled Mikha'il Na'ima
So, think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire across the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is. So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on hearing what you say. And so, in truth, it is. Do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your heads. And, so in truth it does.So wish as if you were the wish. And so, in truth, you are. So live as if your God Himself had need of you his life to live. And so, in truth, he does.
God | Life | Life | Need | Thought | Truth | World | God | Think | Thought |
Muktabai of Maharashtra or Muktabai or Muktai NULL
Though he has no form my eyes saw him, his glory is fire in my mind that knows his secret inner form invented by the soul. What is beyond the mind has no boundary. In it our senses end. Mukta says: Words cannot hold him yet in him all words are. Where darkness is gone I live, where I am happy. I am not troubled by coming and going, I am beyond all vision, above all spheres. His spirit lives in my soul. Mukta says: He is my heart's only home.
Using the moral yardstick mentioned by [Moshe Sharett], I must ask: Are [we justified] in opening fire on the Arabs who cross [the border] to reap the crops they planted in our territory; they, their women, and their children? Will this stand up to moral scrutiny . . .? We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry arabs who cross the line — will this stand up to moral review? Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg. . . [It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know no other method of guarding the borders. then tomorrow the State of Israel will have no borders.