This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.
Hate | Listening | Love | Means | People | Sound | Talking |
People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.
Hate | Listening | Love | Means | People | Sound | Talking |
Amelia Earhart, fully Amelia Mary Earhart
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.
Courage | Fear | Joy | Life | Life | Little | Loneliness | Peace | Price | Soul | Sound |
All God’s works are silent. They are not done amid the rattle of drums and flare of trumpets. Light as it travels makes no noise, utters no sound to the ear. Creation is a silent process; nature rose under the Almighty hand without clang or clamor, or noises that distract and disturb.
Mystery is not the denial of reason but its honest confirmation: reason, indeed, leaves inevitability to mystery… mystery and reality are the two halves of the same sphere.
A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
Religious worship is only as it were a postern by the side of the great portals of beauty and nobility and truth. One whose heart is filled with a yearning mystery at the sight of the starry heavens, who can adore the splendor of noble actions, courageous deeds, patient affections, who can see and love the beauty so abundantly shed abroad in the world… he can at all these moments draw near to God, and open his soul to the influx of the Divine Spirit.
Beauty | Deeds | God | Heart | Love | Mystery | Nobility | Soul | Spirit | Truth | World | Worship | Beauty |
In an age remarkable for good reasoning and bad conduct, for sound rules and corrupt manners, when virtue fills our heads, but vice our hearts; when those who would fain persuade us that they are quite sure of heaven, appear in no greater hurry to go there than other folks, but put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst; in an age when modesty herself is more ashamed of detection than delinquency; when independence of principle consists in having no principle on which to depend; and free thinking, not in thinking freely, but in being free from thinking; in an age when patriots will hold anything except their tongues; keep anything except their word; and lose nothing patiently except their character; to improve such an age must be difficult; to instruct it dangerous; and he stands no chance of amending it who cannot at the same time amuse it.
Age | Chance | Character | Conduct | Detection | Good | Heaven | Hurry | Manners | Modesty | Nothing | Sound | Thinking | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |
Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
When the dust of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place, when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave - in that calm time, when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them, then, with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned away, and left the child with God.
God | Grave | Immortality | Light | Quiet | Sacred | Sound | Time | Child |
Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage.
Experience | Man | Mystery | Religion |
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
Health | Sound | Friendship | Value |
True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
Health | Sound | Friendship | Value |
Claude Montefiore, fully Claude Joseph Goldsmid "C.G." Montefiore
How anyone can believe in eternal punishment... or in any soul which God has made being “lost,” and also believe in the love, nay, even in the justice, of God, is a mystery indeed.
Eternal | God | Justice | Love | Mystery | Punishment | Soul | God |
Claude Montefiore, fully Claude Joseph Goldsmid "C.G." Montefiore
How anyone can believe in eternal punishment... or in any soul which God has made being "lost," and also believe in the love, nay, even in the justice, of God, is a mystery indeed.
Eternal | God | Justice | Love | Mystery | Punishment | Soul | God |