This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator
Insensibility, in return for acts of seeming, even of real, unkindness, is not required of us. But, whilst we feel for such acts, let our feelings be tempered with forbearance and kindness. Let not the sense of our own sufferings render us peevish and morose. Let not our sense of neglect on the part of others induce us to judge of them with harshness and severity. Let us be indulgent and compassionate towards them. Let us seek for apologies for their conduct. Let us be forward in endeavoring to excuse them. And if, in the end, we must condemn them, let us look for the cause of their delinquency, less in a defect of kind intention than in the weakness and errors of human nature. He who knoweth of what we are made, and hath learned, by what he himself suffered, the weakness and frailty of our nature, hath thus taught us to make compassionate allowances for our brethren, in consideration of its manifold infirmities.
Cause | Consideration | Feelings | Forbearance | Intention | Neglect | Sense | Weakness |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
Defeat |
In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. In every defeat is a lesson showing you how to win the victory next time.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
O my God, I know that my sins are too great to tell, And my trespasses too many to remember, Yet as a drop from the sea will I make mention of some, And make confession of them; Perhaps I shall silence the roar of their waves and their crashing, "And Thou wilt hear from heaven and forgive." I have trespassed against Thy law, I have despised Thy commandments, I have abhorred them in my heart, And with my mouth spoken slander. I have committed iniquity, And I have wrought evil, I have been presumptuous, I have done violence, I have plastered over falsehood, I have counselled evil, p. 110 I have lied, I have scoffed, I have revolted, I have blasphemed, I have been rebellious and perverse and sinful, I have stiffened my neck, I have loathed Thy rebukes and done wickedly, I have corrupted my ways, I have strayed from my paths, I have transgressed and turned away from Thy commandments. "But Thou art just in all that is come upon me For Thou hast dealt truly and I have dealt wickedly."
Art | Body | Heart | Lust | Nothing | Poverty | Sin | Soul | Weakness | Art |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself.
Weakness |
Russell Baker. fully Russell Wayne Baker
The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.
Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.
Weakness |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.
Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
It is said that the highest state of prayer is reached when the intellect goes beyond the flesh and the world, and while praying is utterly free from matter and form. He who maintains this state has truly attained unceasing prayer.”
Distinguish | Fighting | God | Hate | Important | Labor | Practice | Sin | Strength | Struggle | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Wickedness | God | Learn | Think |
Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL
When you are in the temple, remember that you are in the living presence of the Lord God, that you stand before His face, before His eyes, in the living presence of the Mother of God, of the holy angels, and of the first-born of the Church that is, our forefathers, the prophets, Apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, reverend Fathers, the righteous, and all the saints. Always have the remembrance and consciousness of this when you are in the temple, and stand with devotion, taking part willingly and with all your heart in the Divine service.
Courage | Heart | Illusion | Lord | Struggle | Weakness | Will | Words |
Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
It is a law of human nature that in victory even the coward may boast of his prowess, while defeat injures the reputation even of the brave.
Defeat |
This will never change, not even if the latest scientific notion that the genesis of all the multitude of organic forms on earth can be traced back to one single, most primitive, primeval form of life should ever appear to be anything more than what it is today, a vague hypothesis still unsupported by fact. Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that nation, would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form [an ape] as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law of “adaptation and heredity” in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures.
Apostasy | Conscience | Frivolity | Magic | Sin | Weakness |
At the outset, I want to say that the organized labor movement of America is not a know-nothing organization. It does not want to erect a wall around the borders of our country and keep everybody else out; it does not declare America for Americans, or for those who are now within American borders. But on the other hand it is equally true that the thinking workingmen of the United States have . . . come to the conclusion that there must be some better regulation and some limitation.
Defeat | Improvement | Love | Order | Position | Question | Sentiment | Will | Friends |
It may be, as you say, the enforced demand for the closed (union) shop is one of the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of industrial peace. But the fact back of this fact . . . is that the trade union is not formed for peace. It is organized for protection -- with peace, of course, where possible. But peace, only, may be death.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.