This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.
Ambition | Fidelity | Grace | Humility | Means | Need | Pleasure | Prejudice | Reality | Sin | Sincerity | Ambition |
God seeks Himself in us, and the aridity and sorrow of our heart is the sorrow of God who is not known in us, who cannot find Himself in us because we do not dare to believe or trust the incredible truth that He could live in us, and live there out of choice, out of preference.
Asceticism | Battle | God | Good | Gratitude | Life | Life | Light | Man | Perfection | Pleasure | Purity | Rest | Simplicity | Struggle | Terror | World | Asceticism | God | Afraid |
We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us—whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need. Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the “one thing necessary” may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.
The sense of liberation from illusory difference
Age | Cult | Error | Human race | Pleasure | Race | Selfishness |
To a Lady Before Marriage - Oh! form'd by Nature, and refin'd by Art, With charms to win, and sense to fix the heart! By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free Thy croud of captives and descend to me? Content in shades obscure to waste thy life, A hidden beauty and a country wife. O! listen while thy summers are my theme, Ah! sooth thy partner in his waking dream! In some small hamlet on the lonely plain, Where Thames, through meadows, rolls his mazy train; Or where high Windsor, thick with greens array'd, Waves his old oaks, and spreads his ample shade, Fancy has figur'd out our calm retreat; Already round the visionary seat Our limes begin to shoot, our flowers to spring, The brooks to murmur, and the birds to sing. Where dost thou lie, thou thinly-peopled green? Thou nameless lawn, and village yet unseen? Where sons, contented with their native ground, Ne'er travell'd further than ten furlongs round; And the tann'd peasant, and his ruddy bride, Were born together, and together died. Where early larks best tell the morning light, And only Philomel disturbs the night, 'Midst gardens here my humble pile shall rise, With sweets surrounded of ten thousand dies; All savage where th' embroider'd gardens end, The haunt of echoes, shall my woods ascend; And oh! if Heaven th' ambitious thought approve, A rill shall warble cross the gloomy grove, A little rill, o'er pebbly beds convey'd, Gush down the steep, and glitter through the glade. What chearing scents those bordering banks exhale! How loud that heifer lows from yonder vale! That thrush how shrill! his note so clear, so high, He drowns each feather'd minstrel of the sky. Here let me trace beneath the purpled morn, The deep-mouth'd beagle, and the sprightly horn; Or lure the trout with well dissembled flies, Or fetch the fluttering partridge from the skies. Nor shall thy hand disdain to crop the vine, The downy peach, or flavour'd nectarine; Or rob the bee-hive of its golden hoard, And bear th' unbought luxuriance to thy board. Sometimes my books by day shall kill the hours, While from thy needle rise the silken flowers, And thou, by turns, to ease my feeble sight, Resume the volume, and deceive the night. Oh! when I mark thy twinkling eyes opprest, Soft whispering, let me warn my love to rest; Then watch thee, charm'd, while sleep locks every sense, And to sweet Heaven commend thy innocence. Thus reign'd our fathers o'er the rural fold, Wise, hale, and honest in the days of old; Till courts arose, where substance pays for show, And specious joys are bought with real woe. See Flavia's pendants, large, well-spread, and right, The ear that wears them hears a fool each night: Mark how the embroider'd colonel sneaks away, To shun the withering dame that made him gay; That knave, to gain a title, lost his fame; That rais'd his credit by a daughter's shame; This coxcomb's ribband cost him half his land, And oaks, unnumber'd, bought that fool a wand. Fond man, as all his sorrows were too few, Acquires strange wants that nature never knew, By midnight lamps he emulates the day, And sleeps, perverse, the chearful suns away; From goblets high-embost, his wine must glide, Found his clos'd sight the gorgeous curtain slide; Fruits ere their time to grace his pomp must rise, And three untasted courses glut his eyes. For this are nature's gentle calls withstood, The voice of conscience, and the bonds of blood; This wisdom thy reward for every pain, And this gay glory all thy mighty gain. Fair phantoms woo'd and scorn'd from age to age, Since bards began to laugh, and priests to rage. And yet, just curse on man's aspiring kind, Prone to ambition, to example blind, Our children's children shall our steps pursue, And the same errours be for ever new. Mean while in hope a guiltless country swain, My reed with warblings chears the imagin'd plain. Hail humble shades, where truth and silence dwell! The noisy town and faithless court farewell! Farewell ambition, once my darling flame! The thirst of lucre, and the charm of fame! In life's by-road, that winds through paths unknown, My days, though number'd, shall be all my own. Here shall they end, (O! might they twice begin) And all be white the Fates intend to spin.
Blessings | Fury | Heaven | Lord | Man | Nations | Nature | Peace | Pleasure | Pride | Rage | Sacred | Style | Learn | Think |
W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson
To a Desolate Friend - O friend, like some cold wind to-day Your message came, and chilled the light; Your house so dark, and mine so bright,— I could not weep, I could not pray! My wife and I had kissed at morn, My children’s lips were full of song; O friend, it seemed such cruel wrong, My life so full, and yours forlorn! We slept last night clasped hand in hand, Secure and calm—and never knew How fared the lonely hours with you, What time those dying lips you fanned. We dreamed of love, and did not see The shadow pass across our dream; We heard the murmur of a stream, Not death’s for it ran bright and free. And in the dark her gentle soul Passed out, but oh! we knew it not! My babe slept fast within her cot, While yours woke to the slow bell’s toll. She paused a moment,—who can tell?— Before our windows, but we lay So deep in sleep she went away, And only smiled a sad farewell! It would be like her; well we know How oft she waked while others slept— She never woke us when she wept, It would be like her thus to go! Ah, friend! you let her stray too far Within the shadow-haunted wood, Where deep thoughts never understood Breathe on us and like anguish are. One day within that gloom there shone A heavenly dawn, and with wide eyes She saw God’s city crown the skies, Since when she hasted to be gone. Too much you yielded to her grace; Renouncing self, she thus became An angel with a human name, And angels coveted her face. Earth’s door you set so wide, alack She saw God’s gardens, and she went A moment forth to look; she meant No wrong, but oh! she came not back! Dear friend, what can I say or sing, But this, that she is happy there? We will not grudge those gardens fair Where her light feet are wandering. The child at play is ignorant Of tedious hours; the years for you To her are moments: and you too Will join her ere she feels your want. The path she wends we cannot track: And yet some instinct makes us know Hers is the joy, and ours the woe,— We dare not wish her to come back!
Choice | Contempt | Desire | Evolution | Folly | Growth | Joy | Labor | Life | Life | Little | Man | Pleasure | Tranquility | Will | Happiness |
W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace
The essential character of Neo-Platonism comes out in its theory of the mystical exaltation of the subject to God. It is the extremity of subjectivism, the forcing of the individual subject to the centre of the universe, to the position of the Absolute Being. And it follows naturally upon the heels of Scepticism. In the Sceptics all faith in the power of thought and reason had finally died out. They {377} took as their watchword the utter impotence of reason to reach the truth. From this it was but a step to the position that, if we cannot attain truth by the natural means of thought, we will do so by a miracle. If ordinary consciousness will not suffice, we will pass beyond ordinary consciousness altogether. Neo-Platonism is founded upon despair, the despair of reason. It is the last frantic struggle of the Greek spirit to reach, by desperate means, by force, the point which it felt it had failed to reach by reason. It seeks to take the Absolute by storm. It feels that where sobriety has failed, the violence of spiritual intoxication may succeed. It was natural that philosophy should end here. For philosophy is founded upon reason. It is the effort to comprehend, to understand, to grasp the reality of things intellectually. Therefore it cannot admit anything higher than reason. To exalt intuition, ecstasy, or rapture, above thought--this is death to philosophy. Philosophy in making such an admission, lets out its own life-blood, which is thought. In Neo-Platonism, therefore, ancient philosophy commits suicide. This is the end. The place of philosophy is taken henceforth by religion. Christianity triumphs, and sweeps away all independent thought from its path. There is no more philosophy now till a new spirit of enquiry and wonder is breathed into man at the Renaissance and the Reformation. Then the new era begins, and gives birth to a new philosophic impulse, under the influence of which we are still living. But to reach that new era of philosophy, the human spirit had first to pass through the arid wastes of Scholasticism.
Age | Aims | Control | Effort | Faith | God | Inquiry | Invention | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | People | Pleasure | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution | Science | Spirit | Time | Universe | Vision | World | God |
I find the religious diversity of the world almost bewilderingly complex. The more I study, the more variegated I find the religious scene to be. I have no reason to urge a thesis of unity among 'the religions of the world'. As a matter of fact, I do not find unity even within one so-called 'religion', let alone among all.... It is not the case that all religions are the same. The historian notes that not even one religion is the same, century after century, or from one country to another, or from village to city.... I repeat: it is not the case that all religions are the same. Moreover, if a philosopher asks (anhistorically) what they all have in common, he or she either finds the answer to be 'nothing', or finds that they all have in common something so much less than each has separately as to distort or to evacuate the individual richness and depth and sometimes grotesqueness of actual religious life.
Dedication | Good | Knowledge | Means | Pleasure | Research | Rule | Sense | Society | Truth | Society | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Argument | Authority | Dissent | Evidence | Fear | Husband | Inconvenient | Intelligence | Opinion | Pleasure | Power | Respect | Thinking | Truth | Will | Worth | Respect | Happiness | Old | Think | Value |
Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.
Example | Faith | Honesty | Pleasure | Shame | Strength | Work | Happiness |
The age of virtuous politics is past, and we are deep in that of cold pretense. - Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere, and we too wise to trust them.
Pleasure |
Thus first necessity invented stools, convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, and luxury the accomplish'd Sofa last.
Pleasure |
Restraining prayer, we cease to fight; prayer keeps the Christian's armor bright; and Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees.
Pleasure |
There is mercy in every place, and mercy, encouraging thought! Gives even affliction a grace and reconciles man to his lot.
Pleasure |
E'vn in the stifling bosom of the town, a garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms that soothes the rich possessor; much consol'd, that here and there some sprigs of mournful mint, or nightshade, or valerian, grace the well he cultivates.
Pleasure |