This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ah, what shall we say then, but that earth threatened often shall live on for ever that such things may be, that the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften, and the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea, that earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet and me?
Fear |
The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, He can surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the empyrean.
Civilization | Disease | Fear | Poverty |
There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience . . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.
To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.
There is little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum and chronograph philosophers. They mean business, not chivalry. . . . the experimental method has quite changed the face of science so far as the latter is a record of mere work done.
Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle from yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle, till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. And the shadow of the night and not love was departed; I was sore, I was weary, yet love lived to seek; so I scaled the dark mountains, and wandered sad-hearted over wearier wastes, where e'en sunlight was bleak, with no rest of the night for my soul waxen weak.
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!
By God I will not tell you more to-day, judge any way you will -- what matters it
Folk say, a wizard to a northern king at Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, that through one window men beheld the spring, and through another saw the summer glow, and through a third the fruited vines a-row, while still, unheard, but in its wonted way, piped the drear wind of that December day. So with this Earthly Paradise it is, if ye will read aright, and pardon me, who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss midmost the beating of the steely sea, where tossed about all hearts of men must be; whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay, not the poor singer of an empty day.
God grant indeed thy words are not for nought! Then shalt thou save me, since for many a day to such a dreadful life I have been brought: nor will I spare with all my heart to pay what man soever takes my grief away; ah! I will love thee, if thou lovest me but well enough my saviour now to be.
Care | Day | Fear | Hate | Hope | Labor | Life | Life | Little | Maxims | Men | Nothing | Pain | People | Rest | Time | Will |
Love is enough: cherish life that abideth, lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him; for who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth, on what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth? And what is the joy of man's life that ye blame him for his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire?
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specifically designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
Yet, dress it as we may, dress and feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it,--what is it, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform!
Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.
We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure in appearing so.