This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.
Beauty | Excellence | Experience | Pleasure | Trust | Will | World | Excellence | Beauty |
I want to have a lasting experience of God, I told him. Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Children use the fist until they are of the age to use the brain.
Joy |
This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.
Ceremony | Culture | Feelings | Joy | Need | Order | Safe | Tradition |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sleep on, Baby, on the floor, tired of all the playing, sleep with smile the sweeter for that you dropped away in! On your curls' full roundness stand golden lights serenely-- one cheek, pushed out by the hand, folds the dimple inly.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place and touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run soon in long rivers down the lifted face, and leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
Depression | Joy | Loneliness | Need |
The four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry.
We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce, mind you. And we invented infidelity, too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.
The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. .. Even in the Eternal City (Rome), says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.
Appreciation | Pleasure | Appreciation |
I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.
There's one sad truth in life I've found while journeying east and west - the only folks we really wound are those we love the best. We flatter those we scarcely know, we please the fleeting guest, and deal full many a thoughtless blow to those who love us best.
Pleasure |
Love is the crown that glorifies; the curse that brands and burdens; it is life and death. It is the great law of the universe; and nothing can exist without its breath.
Cause | Joy | Recompense |
Résumé: razors pain you, rivers are damp, acids stain you, and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful. You might as well live.
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace.
Better | Contentment | Happy | Thought | Youth | Youth | Happiness | Thought |