This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL
There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness.
Learn |
One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self — it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence.
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.
Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves.
Truth |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.
Famous |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
When I received this [coronation] ring I solemnly bound myself in marriage to the realm; and it will be quite sufficient for the memorial of my name and for my glory, if, when I die, an inscription be engraved on a marble tomb, saying, Here lieth Elizabeth, which reigned a virgin, and died a virgin.
Emiliano Zapata, fully Emiliano Zapata Salazar
The land free, the land free for all, land without overseers and without masters.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again—it is hers yet—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it...
I've had a number of men and women who have served me in this way over the years - none carried the title spiritual director, although that is what they have been. Some had never heard of such a term. When I moved to Canada a few years ago and had to leave a long-term relationship of this sort, I looked around for someone whom I could be with in this way. I picked a man whom I knew to be a person of integrity and prayer, with seasoned Christian wisdom in his bones. I anticipated that he would disqualify himself. So I pre-composed my rebuttal: All I want you to do is two things: show up and shut up. Can you do that? Meet with me every six weeks or so, and just be there - an honest, prayerful presence with no responsibility to be anything other than what you have become in your obedient lifetime. And it worked. If that is what you mean by spiritual director, okay. But I still prefer friend.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority. The trouble is with his head, and if he can get that right he will find that what ails him is not superiority but inferiority, and that he, as well as the Negro he despises, is the victim of wage-slavery, which robs him of what he produces and keeps both him and the Negro tied down to the dead level of ignorance and degradation.
Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth - a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage on which to play out the great historical drama: the United States of America versus the Powers of Evil.
The pleasures that he had promised himself did not come to him; and when he had exhausted a circulating library, gone over the collections in the Louvre, and been at the theatre a great many nights in succession, he sank into the lowest depths of idleness.
Friends |
Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.