This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.
Literature | Means | Object |
The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.
Blame | Compassion | Fear | God | Love | Means | Reflection | Will | God |
Eleazar ha-Kappar, alternate spelling Eliezer ha-Kappar
A person who deprives himself of health by injuring himself is considered a sinner.
Perhaps it took a stranger to make a woman like her speak her mind.
I'm happy, I said. 'They asked me love you.! What's wrong to compare love with happiness... Where are seen, love brings happiness.
Means |
ROMEO: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk'st of nothing. Mercutio: True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who wooes even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south. BENVOLIO: This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves; supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Love |
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force, some in their garments, though new-fangled ill, some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; and every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, wherein it finds a joy above the rest: but these particulars are not my measure; all these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost, of more delight than hawks or horses be; and having thee, of all men's pride I boast: wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take all this away and me most wretched make. Sonnet 91
Means |
She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the shearers--three-man songmen all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases, but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.
Means |
She hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults.
And naturally I was reading in the library a few days later from a book about the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna, and I stumbled upon a story about a seeker who once came to see the great master and admitted to him that she feared she was not a good enough devotee, feared that she did not love God enough. And the saint said, Is there nothing you love? The woman admitted that she adored her young nephew more than anything else on earth. The saint said, There, then. He is your Krishna, your beloved. In your service to your nephew, you are serving God.
But why must everything have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years - working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now?
I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.
Accomplishment | Beauty | Experience | Means | Need | Nothing | Order | Beauty |
Here was something I already knew to be true about myself: Just as there are some wives who will occasionally need a break from their husbands in order to visit a spa for the weekend with their girlfriends, I will always be the sort of wife who occasionally needs a break from her husband in order to visit Cambodia. Just for a few days!
I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call The Physics of The Quest- a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting(which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments)and set out on a truth-seeking journey(either externally or internally),and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared - most of all -to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself....then truth will not be withheld from you. Or so I've come to believe.
I do not need to love you to prove that I love myself!!
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I would build a cloudy House for my thoughts to live in; when for earth too fancy-loose and too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, to which I looked with thee.
Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.
Eternal | Evolution | God | History | Humanity | Ideas | Individual | Longing | Means | Need | Nothing | Order | Peace | Providence | Right | Sacred | Search | Spirit | Story | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wonder | God | Think | Thought |
The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).