This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
The anguish of my life here - its rages - is hardly mentioned...There is violence there and anger never resolved. I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word,a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines...It may be outwardly silent here but in the back of my mind is a clamor of human voices, too many needs, hopes and fear. I hardly ever sit still without being haunted by the "undone".
Anger | Fear | Good | Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Mind | Need | Reason | Silence | Will |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
In life after death, the experiences of pain and pleasure become much more intense than what they were in the earthly life. And These subjective states of intensified suffering and joy are respectively called hell and heaven. Hell and heaven are states, of the mind; they should not be looked upon as being places; and, though, from the subjective point of view, they mean a great deal for the individualised soul, they are both illusions within the greater illusion of the phenomenal world.
Heaven | Hell | Illusion | Joy | Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Suffering |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
It is the mission of each true knight... His duty... nay, his privilege! To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go; To right the unrightable wrong. To love, pure and chaste, from afar, To try, when your arms are too weary, To reach the unreachable star! This is my Quest to follow that star, No matter how hopeless, no matter how far, To fight for the right Without question or pause, To be willing to march into hell For a heavenly cause! And I know, if I'll only be true To this glorious Quest, That my heart will lie peaceful and calm When I'm laid to my rest. And the world will be better for this, That one man, scorned and covered with scars, Still strove, with his last ounce of courage, To reach the unreachable stars!
Better | Heart | Hell | Mission | Question | Right | Sorrow | Will | World |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The reign of tears is over. The slums will be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent." That is how Billy Sunday, noted evangelist and leading crusader aginst Demon Rum, greeted the onset of Prohibition in 1920, enacted in a burst of moral righteousness at the end of the First World War. That episode is a stark reminder of where drives to protect us from ourselves can lead. Prohibition was imposed for our own good. Alcohol is a dangerous substance. More lives are lost each year from alcohol than from all the dangerous substances the FDA controls put together. But where did Prohibtion lead? New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Al Capone, Bugs Moran became notorious for their exploits - murder, extortion, hijacking, bootlegging.Who were their customers? Respectable citizens who would never themselves have approved or engaged in, the activites that Al Capone and his fellow gangsters made infamous. They simply wanted a drink. In order to have a drink, they had to break the law. Prohbition didnt stop drinkin. It did convert a lot of otherwise law-obedient citizens into lawbreakers. It did suppress many of the disciplinary forces of the market that ordinarily protect the consumer from shoddy, adulterated, and dangerous products. It did corrupt the minions of the law and create a decadent moral climate. It did not stop the consumption of alcohol.
Children | Crime | Hell | Law | Men | Order | Righteousness | Tears | Will | World |
Mother Jones, referring to Mary Harris Jones
I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!
Convictions | Hell | Need |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
In God's kingdom there is no fighting. He rules over both kingdom of hell and the kingdom of heaven, giving each of His creations what is due to them, but taking no share for Himself. God is One. He proclaims, My religion is to recognize all lives as one’s own life, all religions as one’s own religion, all languages as one’s own language, all vision as one’s own vision. It is in this state that God conducts His kingdom. He has no partialities, no religious differences, and prejudices based on skin color, whether it be black, red, white, or yellow. In His kingdom, there is no fighting.
If there be a paradise for virtues, there must be a hell for crimes.
Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion - tender, beautiful as an angel - was struck down by insatiable death. I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover. I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope
Battle | Despair | Grief | Hell | Man | Nobility | Nothing | Object | Passion | Thought | Will | Thought |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Heaven is not somewhere else: it is a way of living. So is hell — a style of life. Hell is living unconsciously; heaven is living consciously. Hell is your own creation, so is heaven. If you go on living unconsciously, through your unconscious desires, instincts, motives — of which you are not the master but only the victim — then you create hell around yourself. But if you start living a conscious life, a life of bringing more and more light to the deep, dark corners of your being, if you start living full of light, your life is moment-to-moment ecstasy.
Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Light | Motives | Style | Victim |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
A really religious person will say yes to life joyously, dancingly. His whole being will be a celebration. He will not act out of fear, he will act out of love. He will not be worried about hell and heaven, he will not be worried at all. He will live moment-to-moment, but he will live each moment with utter totality. and that total living brings bliss, that total living is the path of bliss.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival. That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence — in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you. Heaven is just a name for that state of mind. Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself.
Consciousness | Existence | Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Sacred | Will |
Love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured… Love is a force that will never be subdued. If we try to control it, love will destroy us. If we try to keep it, love will enslave us. If we try to understand it, love will leave us in confusion… Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows… Love is always new. No matter that we love one, two, ten times in life we are always faced with a situation we do not know. Love can take us to hell or to paradise, but always leads somewhere. We must accept it, as is the food of our existence. If we are negative we, seeing starve the tree branches laden life, without courage to reach out and pick fruit. It is necessary to find love where you are, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. Because the moment we left in search of love, love comes to us also. And save us.
Control | Courage | Destroy | Disease | Force | Hell | Life | Life | Love | Means | Search | Wants | Will | Understand |
God has a prepared path for us to follow. We just have to read the omens he has left for us… God hides the fires of hell within paradise… God is always close to us, whether we pray to him or not… God is one, and is called a thousand name;, but should choose a name to address him… God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him… God only allows us to see such things when he wants something to change… God only rarely reveals the future. When he does so, it is for one reason: it's a future that was written so as to be altered… God always offers us a second chance in life… Anyone who knows God cannot describe Him. Anyone who can describe God does not know Him.
But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being.
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humor and English wine.
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
Babies dead without baptism go to Limbo, where they do not enjoy God, but neither do they suffer, because, having original sin alone, they do not deserve paradise, but neither do they merit hell or purgatory.
If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self ... so the hell with it... I will continue to be unconcerned about it, which surely has the advantage that I'm left in peace by many a fop who would otherwise come to see me.
We have a friend and protector, from whom, if we do not ourselves depart from Him, nor power nor spirit can separate us. In His strength let us proceed on our journey, through the storms, and troubles, and dangers of the world. However they may rage and swell, though the mountains shake at the tempests, our rock will not be moved: we have one friend who will never forsake us; one refuge, where we may rest in peace and stand in our lot at the end of the days. That same is He who liveth, and was dead; who is alive forevermore; and hath the keys of hell and of death.
Friend | Hell | Peace | Power | Rage | Rest | Spirit | Strength | Will |
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose.