This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
She wants her silence to be final. Here, more than anyplace else, she wants her memory uncontested. She does not want me talking to others, gathering other stories, looking into the remnants of my father's past. When she is silent, she wants those things about which she refuses to speak to remain as quiet as the tomb. That is the ultimate power of stories. They take on themselves the decision about what will be remembered and what will be told. The part of the past she claims most fiercely is the part she wants forgotten.
Decision | Memory | Past | Power | Quiet | Silence | Talking | Wants | Will |
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
Expression of Gratitude to the Lord Almighty at these occassions daily; For gift of Memory at dawn, For the gift of Energy at meal times, and for the gift of Peace at night is called Trikal Sandhya.
We are lucky to have fossils at all. It is a remarkably fortunate fact of geology that bones, shells and other hard parts of animals, before they decay, can occasionally leave an imprint which later acts as a mold, which shapes hardening rock into a permanent memory of the animal. We don't know what proportion of animals are fossilized after their death but it is certainly very small indeed. Nevertheless, however small the proportion fossilized, there are certain things about the fossil record that any evolutionist should expect to be true. We should be very surprised, for example, to find fossil humans appearing in the record before mammals are supposed to have evolved! If a single, well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500 million year-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed. Incidentally, this is a sufficient answer to the canard, put about by creationists and their journalistic fellow travellers, that the whole theory of evolution is an 'unfalsifiable' tautology.
Given the evident fact that bubbles tend to burst, resulting in a destruction of wealth sometimes on an enormous and catastrophic scale, one might expect that governments would seek to restrain the riskier versions of speculative investing through regulation. This has indeed been the case in historic periods immediately following spectacular crashes. For example, after the 1929 stock market crash regular commercial banks (which accept deposits and make loans) were prohibited from acting as investment banks (which deal in stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments). But as the memory of a crash...
That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.
The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
Imagination | Memory | Right |
He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
Imagination | Memory |
Roland B. Gittelsohn, fully Roland Bertram Gittelsohn
This is the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D–day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the side with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island.It is not easy to do so,” He continued. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their place. Indeed some of us are alive and breathing at this very monent only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of men such as these is not easy . . . No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead of our Division who are not here have already done. All we can even hope to do is follow their example. To show the same selfless courage in peace as they did in war. To swear by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours will never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. . . . “We dedicate ourselves, first, to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried in this war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor--- together . . . . Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. Any man among us, the living, who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother . . . . makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates an empty, hollow mockery. To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars. We shall not foolishly suppose, as did the last generation of America’s fighting men, that victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of Democracy at home. This war with all its frightful heartache and suffering, is but the beginning of our generations struggle for democracy . . . . Thus do we memorialize those who, have ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come—we promise – the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
Beginning | Birth | Ceremony | Courage | Democracy | Earth | Fighting | Freedom | God | Guarantee | Hate | Hope | Man | Memory | Men | Mourn | Nothing | Pain | Peace | Power | Price | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Speech | Strength | Struggle | War | Will | God | Blessed | Friends | Understand |
The Trial By Existence - Even the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth’s unhonored things Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified.
Agony | Awe | Choice | Daring | Death | Existence | Fate | God | Gold | Good | Heart | Heaven | Laughter | Life | Life | Light | Little | Memory | Mind | Pain | Pride | Reward | Sacrifice | Spirit | Thought | Valor | Valor | Witness | Woe | Wonder | Fate | Trial | God | Thought |
Elie Wiesel, fully Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance.
Individual | Man | Memory |
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned, To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not.
Memory |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Now is the time to unite the soul and the world. Now is the time to see the sunlight dancing as one with the shadows.
Memory |
Rupert Sheldrake, fully Alfred Rupert Sheldrake
The universe is not in a steady state; there's an ongoing creative principle in nature, which is driving things onwards.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
Any kind of thought or meditation or pleasure would impede and disturb the soul and would introduce noise into the deep silence which the soul should observe in order to hear the deep and delicate voice in which God speaks to the heart in this secret place. When the soul is led into silence, it must forget even the practice of loving advertence… it must practice that advertence only when it is not conscious of being brought into solitude or interior rest or forgetfulness. Pure contemplation consists in receiving. The soul approaches God more nearly by not understanding than by understanding. Faith is darkness to the understanding. God brought them to this solitude and emptiness of their faculties and operations that He may speak to their hearts. God is leading you through the state of solitude and recollection and withdrawing you from your labors of sense. Return not to sense again. Lay aside your operations for they will now be a great obstacle and hindrance to you, since God is granting you the grace of Himself working within you. God is bearing the soul in His arms… and thus, although it is making progress at the rate willed by God Himself, it is not conscious of such movement. Three kinds of love: 1. the soul now loves God, not through itself but through Himself. 2. the soul is absorbed in the love of God and God surrenders Himself to the soul with great vehemence. 3. the soul love Him for Who He is.
Absolute | Forgetfulness | God | Habit | Hope | Journey | Knowing | Knowledge | Means | Memory | Method | Regard | Rights | Silence | Soul | Will | God |
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.
Contemplation | Forgetfulness | God | Knowing | Memory | Soul | Strength | Time | God | Contemplation |