This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Edmond Rostand, fully Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand
The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun has been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages.
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.
Man | Understanding | Wants | Wisdom |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Language is slow; the mastery of wants doth teach it to the infant, drop by drop, as brooklets gather. Yet there is a love, simple and sure, that asks no discipline of weary years, the language of the soul, told through the eye. The stammering lip oft mars the perfect thought; but the heart's lightning hath no obstacle. Quick glances, like the thrilling wires, transfuse the telegraphic look.
Discipline | Heart | Language | Love | Soul | Teach | Thought | Wants | Wisdom |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
“It is not safe to be alone,” nor can all which the cold-hearted, pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship. A good heart wants something to be kind to; and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits suffer most under the destitution.
Good | Heart | Mind | Nature | Philosophy | Safe | Society | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Yearnings | Society |
A time of quietude brings things into proportion and gives us strength. We all need to take time from the busyness of living, even it be only 10 minutes to watch the sun go down or the city lights blossom against a canyoned sky. We need time to dream, time to remember, and time to reach toward the infinite. Time to be.
A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. so shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thing own candle, and then shalt thou see clearly the sun of righteousness.
Doubt | Faith | God | Heart | Ignorance | Logic | Love | Mystery | Philosophy | Reason | Religion | Reverence | Righteousness | Soul | Wisdom |
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
The future is like heaven--everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
Roland Barthes, fully Roland Gérard Barthes
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
Think that day lost whose descending sun views from thy hand no noble action done.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, no birth, identity, form - no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space - ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold - the embers left from earlier fires, the sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; to frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns, with grass and flower and fruits and corn.
Appearance | Birth | Body | Force | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Object | Space | Time | Wisdom | World |
Anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
The men who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.