This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.
Better | Choice | God | Good | Important | Law | Life | Life | Man | Perfection | Will | God |
The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is in fact an intensification of life a completeness a fullness a wholeness of life.
Better | Capacity | Choice | Education | Freedom | Life | Life | Light | Man | People | Perfection | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Relationship | Risk | Spirit | Taste | Wants | World |
For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
Belief | Perfection | Will |
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Individual | Life | Life | Perfection |
The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
Unlike Christian-Jewish dialogue, whose sour grapes have set our teeth on edge, Jewish-Muslim dialogue will be fruitful. Certainly it will serve notice on the Arabs that their Jewish “cousins” have broken out of their Western provincialism. If henceforth Jews will assign to Jewish-Muslim dialogue the importance that is its due, the Arabs, in whose nationalism religion is as important as it is in Jewish nationalism, will eventually – and perhaps sooner than cold-headed realists will dare expect – rediscover that the Jews are their brothers, descendants of Abraham’s second son.
Before The Rain - We knew it would rain, for all the morn A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst. Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-- Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To sprinkle them over the land in showers. We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!
Good | Grave | Mankind | Perfection | Reading |
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
I am the Reaper. All things with heedful hook Silent I gather. Pale roses touched with the spring, Tall corn in summer, Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms— Reaping, still reaping— All things with heedful hook Timely I gather. I am the Sower. All the unbodied life Runs through my seed-sheet. Atom with atom wed, Each quickening the other, Fall through my hands, ever changing, still changeless. Ceaselessly sowing, Life, incorruptible life, Flows from my seed-sheet. Maker and breaker, I am the ebb and the flood, Here and Hereafter, Sped through the tangle and coil Of infinite nature, Viewless and soundless I fashion all being. Taker and giver, I am the womb and the grave, The Now and the Ever.
If you're serious about something, it has a fixed time. If you're earnest about getting something done and the phone rings, you ignore it. The spiritual side of your life is not a hobby nor a luxury --it is your purpose of existence. When you are learning Torah, or meditating or in prayer, nothing else exists. Your spiritual career should have at least equal priority to your worldly career.
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
Ballade of Dead Actors - Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours -- friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one and all. The curtain falls, the play is played: The Beggar packs beside the Beau; The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; The Thunder huddles with the Snow. Where are the revellers high and low? The clashing swords? The lover's call? The dancers gleaming row on row? Into the night go one and all.
Age | Chance | Duty | Fear | Gold | Need | Politics | Time | War | Wit |
I love the jocund dance, The softly breathing song, Where innocent eyes do glance, And where lisps the maiden’s tongue. I love the laughing vale, I love the echoing hill, Where mirth does never fail, And the jolly swain laughs his fill. I love the pleasant cot, I love the innocent bow’r, Where white and brown is our lot, Or fruit in the mid-day hour. I love the oaken seat, Beneath the oaken tree, Where all the old villagers meet, And laugh our sports to see. I love our neighbours all, But, Kitty, I better love thee; And love them I ever shall; But thou art all to me.
Mutual Forgiveness of each vice, Such are the Gates of Paradise, Against the Accuser’s chief desire, Who walk’d among the stones of fire. Jehovah’s Finger wrote the Law; Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe, And the dead corpse, from Sinai’s heat, Buried beneath His Mercy-seat.
The Divine Image - To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our Father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is man, His child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.
The Holiness of Minute Particulars - And many conversèd on these things as they labour’d at the furrow, Saying: ‘It is better to prevent misery than to release from misery; It is better to prevent error than to forgive the criminal. Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones; And those who are in misery cannot remain so long, If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth.… He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars, And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power: The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity. Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually, On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!
Family | Good | Harmony | Land | Lord | Love | Man | Vengeance | Forgive |
True superstition is ignorant honesty and this is beloved of God and man.
Repose |
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.
Art | Care | Man | Perfection | Art |
Dress drains our cellar dry, and keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires and introduces hunger, frost, and woe, where peace and hospitality might reign.
Hence jarring sectaries may learn their real interest to discern; that brother should not war with brother, and worry and devour each other.
Harmony |