This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our days are busy with little leisure for frills. We have work to do, interests to pursue, books to read, letters to write, the telephone to answer, errands to run, children to raise, investments to tend to, the lawn to mow, food to prepare and serve, the garbage to take out. We don’t need God’s help or counsel in doing any of these things. God is necessary for the big things, most obviously creation and salvation. But for the rest we can, for the most part, take care of ourselves. That usually adds up to a workable life, at least when accompanied by a decent job and a good digestion. But—it is not the practice of resurrection; it is not growing up in Christ, it is not living in the company of the Trinity.
Depression | Feelings | Security |
Your question is already answered by the fact that I made you take a test. You have now reached a stage where teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. You can separate from me any time you wish. Even if broad seas lie between us, I shall always be with you when you practice what you have learned. I need not ask you to keep up your regular practicing, not to discontinue it on any pretext whatsoever, and to let no day go by without your performing the ceremony, even without bow and arrow, or at least without having breathed properly. I need not ask you because I know that you can never give up this spiritual archery. Do not ever write to me about it, but send me photographs from time to time so that I can see how you draw the bow. Then I shall know everything I need to know.
Choice | Difficulty | Right | Will |
I distinguish three sorts of signs: 1. Accidental signs, or the objects which particular circumstances have connected with some of our ideas, so as to render the one proper to revive the other. 2. Natural signs, or the cries which nature has established to express the passions of joy, of fear, or of grief, 3. Instituted signs, or those which we have chosen ourselves, and bear only an arbitrary relation to our ideas.
Distinction | Distinguish | Experience | Impression | Play | Rest |
If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. There must be an organic unity between past and future lived in the present.
Experience | Feelings | Heart | Little | Need | Past | People | Will | Work | Value |
I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.
Character | Good | Pleasure | Speech | Thought | World | Think | Thought |
My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors.
Immortality | Mortal | People |
It is easy to distinguish two ideas absolutely simple; but in proportion as they become more complex, the difficulties increase. Then as our notions resemble each other in more respects, there is reason to fear lest we take many of them for one only, or at least that we do not distinguish them as much as we might. This frequently happens in. metaphysics and morals. The subject which we have actually in hand, is a very sensible proof of the difficulties that are to be surmounted. On these occasions we cannot be too cautious in pointing out even the minutest differences.
Imagination | Present |
The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves.
Right |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.
Enough |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
They are distorted, deformed, hideous mentally and morally. Their trade is treason, their breath is pollution and yet the officials of the C.B.&Q. formed a conspiracy with these professional liars, perjurers, cut-throats and murderers to overcome a strike, the result of a policy of flagrant injustice.
Duty | Government | Talking | Time | War | Government |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I've developed a total loathing for McCain, conceited little asshole. And he thinks he's wonderful. I mean, you can just tell, this little simper of self-love that he does all the time. You just want to kick him.
Enough |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
If you go to the city of Washington, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of congress, and mis-representatives of the masses claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.