This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O' What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side! Measure for Measure, Act iii, Scene 2
Mind |
It ought not to be the leading object of any one to become an eminent metaphysician, mathematician, or poet, but to render himself happy as an individual, and an agreeable, a respectable, and a useful member of society.
Mind | Order | Power | Understand |
'O opportunity! Thy guilt is great, 'tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason; thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get; whoever plots the sin, thou point'st the season; 'tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason; and in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, sits sin to seize the souls that wander by him.
Mind |
The word will, however, is not always used in this its proper acceptation, but is frequently substituted for volition, as when I say that my hand moves in obedience to my will.
Mind |
Of all the men alive I never yet beheld that special face which I could fancy more than any other.
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!
Dreams | Good | Little | Mind | Misfortune | Prayer | Time | Misfortune | Old |
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working all his visage wanned, tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit? And all for nothing, for Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have? He would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech, make mad the guilty and appal the free, confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like john-a-dreams, unpregnant for my cause, and can say nothing. No, not for a king, upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat was made. Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' the throat as deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha, 'swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be but I am pigeon-livered and lack gall to make oppression bitter, or ere this I should ha' fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am i! This is most brave, that i, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, must like a whore unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing like a very drab, a stallion! Fie upon't, foh! About, my brains. Hum -- I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions. For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ. I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks. I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen may be a devil, and the devil hath power t' assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds more relative than this. The play's the thing wherein i'll catch the conscience of the king. Hamlet, Act ii, Scene 2
Mind |
Our rash faults Make trivial price of serious thing we have, Not knowing them until we know their grave. All's Well That Ends Well (King of France at V, iii)
We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners.
Age | Experience | Knowledge | Memory |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
Life is full of uncertainties, perhanps one day some unforeseen circumstance would bring her into his life once more.
When asked about the importance of receiving teachings on dedication, Gape Lama answered, "Whatever Dharma practice we engage in, large or small, we must dedicate the merit. If we fail to dedicate, then whatever merit we have accumulated can be lost very easily in a moment of anger, or in giving rise to any afflictive emotion or action."
When private virtue is hazarded on the perilous cast of expediency, the pillars of the republic, however apparent their stability, are infected with decay at the very centre.
Individuality | Mind |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The conjunction of the two, like that of the lame and the blind, is for the perception of Nature (pradhana) by the Self (purusha) and for the release of the Self. From this conjunction proceeds evolution.
Knowledge | Principles | Study |
I am present in front of anyone who has faith in me, just as the moon casts its reflection, effortlessly, in any vessel filled with water.