This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: 'This is the real me!'
We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure upsurges of fresh spiritual vitality, breaking through and revolting against the hardened structure of the older body, and claiming, in the name of the Spirit, liberty from outward forms and institutions. And we have seen how rapidly they develop their own forms, their own structures of thought, of language, and of organization. It would surely be a very unbiblical view of human nature and history to think -- as we so often, in our pagan way, do -- that this is just an example of the tendency of all things to slide down from a golden age to an age of iron, to identify the spiritual with the disembodied, and to regard visible structure as equivalent to sin. We must rather recognize here a testimony to the fact that Christianity is, in its very heart and essence, not a disembodied spirituality, but life in a visible fellowship, a life which makes such total claim upon us, and so engages our total powers, that nothing less than the closest and most binding association of men with one another can serve its purpose.
Firmness | Grief | Life | Life | Perfection | Pious | Poverty | Pride | Strength | Weakness | Will |
Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other... The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity; but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least of all deserve it.
Awakening | Desire | Force | God | Heart | Life | Life | Longing | Man | Prayer | Spirit | Thought | Time | Will | God | Thought |
April O fair mid-spring, besung so oft and oft, How can I praise thy loveliness enow? Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow, The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow, The hopes and chances of the growing year, Winter forgotten long, and summer near. When summer brings the lily and the rose, She brings us fear-her very death she brings Hid in her anxious heart, the forge of woes; And, dull with fear, no more the mavis sings. But thou! thou diest not, but thy fresh life clings About the fainting autumn's sweet decay, When in the earth the hopeful seed they lay. Ah! life of all the year, why yet do I, Amid thy snowy blossoms' fragrant drift, Still long for that which never draweth nigh, Striving my pleasure from my pain to sift, Some weight from off my fluttering mirth to lift? - Now, when far bells are ringing Come again, Come back, past years! why will ye pass in vain?
If I were asked to say what is at once the most important production of Art and the thing most to be longed for I should answer A beautiful House and if I were further asked to name the production next in importance and the thing next to be longed for I should answer A beautiful Book. To enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort, seems to me to be the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human beings ought now to struggle.
Speak but one word to me over the corn, over the tender, bowed locks of the corn.
Aesthetic | Concealment | Corruption | Dreams | Indulgence | Life | Life | Lying | Nothing | Restraint | Will |
It sprang without sowing, it grew without heeding, ye knew not its name and ye knew not its measure, ye noted it not mid your hope and your pleasure; there was pain in its blossom, despair in its seeding, but daylong your bosom now nurseth its treasure.
Beauty | Desire | Humanity | Life | Life | Man | Men | Sense | Beauty |
Forsooth, he that waketh in hell and feeleth his heart fail him, shall have memory of the merry days of earth, and how that when his heart failed him there, he cried on his fellow, were it his wife or his son or his brother or his gossip or his brother sworn in arms, and how that his fellow heard him and came and they mourned together under the sun, till again they laughed together and were but half sorry between them. This shall he think on in hell, and cry on his fellow to help him, and shall find that therein is no help because there is no fellowship, but every man for himself.
And then the image, that well-nigh erased over the castle-gate he did behold, above a door well-wrought in colored gold again he saw; a naked girl with wings enfolded in a serpent's scaly rings.
Do not be afraid of large patterns, if properly designed they are more restful to the eye than small ones: on the whole, a pattern where the structure is large and the details much broken up is the most useful... very small rooms, as well as very large ones, look better ornamented with large patterns.
And the clouds fade above. Loved lips are thine as i tremble and hearken; bright thine eyes shine, though the leaves thy brow darken. O love, kiss me into silence, lest no word avail me, stay my head with thy bosom lest breath and life fail me! O sweet day, o rich day, made long for our love!