This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;... If you can fill the unforgiving minute With Sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
The more we search for an alibi, the more we discover that unhappiness on earth is man-made.
Earth | Man | Search | Unhappiness | Wisdom |
Wisdom is alone, but a lonely path does not lead to wisdom. Isolation is death, and wisdom is not found in withdrawal. There is no path to wisdom, for all paths are separative, exclusive. In their very nature, paths can only lead to isolation, though these isolations are called unity, the whole, the one, and so end is as the means. The means is not separate from the goal, the “what should be.” Wisdom comes with the understanding of one’s relationship with the field, with the passer-by, with the fleeting thought. To withdraw, to isolate oneself in order to find, is to put an end to discovery. Relationship leads to an aloneness that is not of isolation. There must be an aloneness, not of the enclosing mind, but of freedom. The complete is the alone, and incompleteness seeks the way of isolation.
Death | Discovery | Freedom | Isolation | Means | Mind | Nature | Order | Relationship | Thought | Understanding | Unity | Wisdom |
Music is God’s best gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth that we take to heaven. But music, like all our gifts, is given us in the germ. It is for us to unfold and develop it by instruction and cultivation.
Art | Cultivation | Earth | God | Heaven | Man | Music | Wisdom | Instruction | Art |
Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power that we can use it when we please... Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil.
Consideration | Evil | Good | Joy | Mind | Power | Present | Sense | Sorrow | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage; that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships that has give us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.
Barbarism | Comfort | Earth | Elegance | Labor | Man | Plenty | Wisdom |
Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The greatest security of the liberties of a people who do not cultivate the earth is their not knowing the use of money... The people who have no money have but few wants; and these are supplied with ease, and in an equal manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and hence it proceeds that their chiefs are not despotic.
Earth | Equality | Knowing | Money | People | Security | Wants | Wisdom |
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
Awareness | Conscience | Destiny | Difficulty | Isolation | Order | Rites | Silence | Solitude | Wisdom | Awareness |
The meaning of life is to be found in our surroundings and in our relationships... Life is meaningful when we respect the best of tradition while still loving innovation... Life is fulfilling when we marry pride with tolerance, when our deeds and our words are nourished by hope and by realism, when the wisdom of the ages catches the passionate eye of youth. Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent peoples, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible - and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow.
Deeds | Earth | Hope | Ideas | Innovation | Interdependent | Life | Life | Meaning | Pride | Respect | Time | Tomorrow | Tradition | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Deeds | Respect |
To be mistaken is a misfortune to be pitied; but to know the truth and not to conform one's actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth condemn.
Crime | Earth | Heaven | Misfortune | Truth | Wisdom | Misfortune |