This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working all his visage wanned, tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit? And all for nothing, for Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have? He would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech, make mad the guilty and appal the free, confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like john-a-dreams, unpregnant for my cause, and can say nothing. No, not for a king, upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' the throat as deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha, 'swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be but I am pigeon-livered and lack gall to make oppression bitter, or ere this I should ha' fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am i! This is most brave, that i, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must like a whore unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing like a very drab, a stallion! Fie upon't, foh! About, my brains. Hum -- I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions. For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ. I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks. I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen may be a devil, and the devil hath power t' assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds more relative than this. The play's the thing wherein i'll catch the conscience of the king. Hamlet, Act ii, Scene 2
Mind |
When private virtue is hazarded on the perilous cast of expediency, the pillars of the republic, however apparent their stability, are infected with decay at the very centre.
Individuality | Mind |
The public sense is in advance of private practice.
How to deal with the goodness of their loved ones? Could be fought against goodness?
Chastity | Earth | Giving | Good | Guilt | Impression | Responsibility | Self | Truth | Wrong |
Why, what's wrong! Religions are like rivers: all flow into a sea. Mother Mary embodies compassion, mercy, love and unconditional love. It is personal, but belongs to everyone. Never mind that you're a Muslim, you can still love her and even called his daughter Maria.
Literature | People | Right | Teach | Writing |
Together, we can answer this question. If you've been holding off on contributing to a presidential campaign, now's the time to jump in. We have a Democratic nominee, and he needs our support today.
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything.
Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.
Attention | Divinity | Longing | Meditation | Mysticism | Nature | Religion | Self | Spirituality | Time | Friends |
The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.
Infancy |
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man.
Abundance | Body | Conversation | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Meditation | Money | Need | People | Reading | Spirit | Time | World | Think | Understand |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
Someone may object that material things extend beyond the realm of our present perception. It belongs to their very essence to be more than what is intimated or revealed in a continuum of subjective aspects at the moment of perception. They are also there when we do not perceive them: they exist in themselves.
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
In work - meaning, in effort, in its pain and sorrow - the subject finds the weight of the existence which involves its existent freedom itself. Pain and sorrow are' the phenomena to which the solitude of the existent is finally reduced.
Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith
"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."
Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
English is his third language and some of us were thinking about getting up a fund and sending him back to Berlitz for the remainder of the English language course.