This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I know he has a bad nature,' said Catherine; 'he's your son. But I'm glad I've a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me and for that reason I love him. Mr Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery! You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldn't be you!
Many people look upon change with dread and foreboding. But for those on the spiritual path—for those who believe in God and the power of prayer—change is a fuller expression of life. When a problem or condition arises in your life that indicates a change, rely upon God, and realize that it is not so much that a door has closed on a chapter of your life, but rather that a door has opened on new and more interesting things.
Freedom | Law | Life | Life | Past | Position | Power | Prosperity | Rights |
And the Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world -whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself -is amenable to man's thought, and that he had dominion over it when he knows it.
Bible | Faith | Law | Life | Life | Prayer | Right | Struggle | Truth | Understanding | Will | Bible | Teacher |
The moment you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, you should reject it instantly. Immediately switch your attention to the Presence of God. Do not stop to say "good-bye" to the error thought, but break the connection instantly and occupy your mind with good; you will be surprised how many difficulties will begin to melt away out of your life. Indeed, we may say that when error presents itself to consciousness, the first five seconds are Golden. In the text quoted above, Jesus teaches this lesson in his own graphic way. The immediate application of these words was, of course, to the coming siege of Jerusalem, but the idea involved is eternal. The holy place is your consciousness, and the abomination of desolation is any negative thought, because a negative thought means belief in the absence of God at the point concerned. Those who are in Judea are those who believe that prayer does change things; to flee to the mountains means to pray, especially that quick switching of the thought to the Presence of God, which I have mentioned.
Belief | Depression | Example | Failure | God | Health | Law | Means | Metaphysics | Plenty | War | Will | Failure | Trouble | God | Think |
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.
Future | Individual | Law | Means | Oppression | Present | Revolution | Parent |
Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.
Coercion | Dignity | Effort | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Initiative | Labor | Life | Life | Man | Murder | People | Sense | Submission | Terrorism | Tyranny | Murder | Value |
The law of circulation is a Cosmic Law. That means that it is true everywhere and on all planes. The law is that constant rhythmical movement is necessary to health and harmony. Now the opposite of circulation is congestion, and it may be said that all sickness, in harmony, or trouble of any kind is really due to some form of congestion. If you think this subject out for yourself you will be fascinated to find how generally true it is, and in what unexpected places it appears. Much ill health is due to emotional congestion. This leads to congestion of the nerve, blood, and lymphatic fluids, producing disease. The depression belief under which the country labored for ten years was a case of congestion. There was plenty of raw material, machinery, and skill, and a very wide- spread demand for goods; but a case of congestion occurred! The dust bowl trouble and its allied misfortune, the floods, is, of course, an example of congestion. War itself is really due to frustrated circulation on many planes of existence. Some students of metaphysics shut their minds to the reception of new truth, and this always produces mental congestion and a failure to demonstrate. You should treat yourself two or three times a week for free circulation on all planes-by claiming that God is bringing this about.
Attention | Confidence | Control | Destiny | Force | Good | Law | Liberty | Means | Order | Thinking | Thought | Will | Govern | Learn | Think | Thought | Understand |
One of the first rules on the spiritual path is that you must attend strictly to your own business and not interfere with that of others. Your neighbor's life is sacred and you have no right to try to manage it for him. Let him alone. God has given him free will and self-determination, so why should you interfere? Many well-meaning people are constantly "butting in"" to their neighbors' lives without invitation. They pretend to themselves that their only desire is to help, but this is self-deception. It is really a desire to interfere. Interference always does more harm than good. Actually those who mind other people's business always neglect their own. The man who wants to put your house in order has always made a failure of his own life. M.Y.O.B. Of course, this does not mean that you are not to help people whenever you can; in fact, you should make it a rule to try to do at least one kind act every day; but you must do it without interfering or encroaching. When in doubt, claim Divine Guidance. It is always right to give your neighbor the right thought. Under any circumstances it can only do good to "Golden Key" him when you think of him. Don't fuss - God is running the universe.
Boasting | Business | Confidence | Destroy | Important | Inspiration | Kill | Law | Nature | People | Plan | Secrecy | Talking | Will | World | Business | Child |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
I read one psychologist's theory that said, "Never strike a child in your anger." When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he's recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?
Aid | Desire | Future | People | Question | Talking | Value |
We rarely write the names of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon – each unique and surely of crucial significance – as here, honoring them with a capital letter. This may seem trivial, but our dislocation from nature is one of the most serious schisms in our dismembered psyche and probably the most urgent relationship we need to heal.
Action | Consciousness | Energy | Important | Intention | Law | Power |
If you get rid of the four-layered neurotic shield, the armor that covers the characterological lie about life, how can you talk about “enjoying” this Pyrrhic victory? The person gives up something restricting and illusory, it is true, but only to come face to face with something even more awful: genuine despair. Full humanness means full fear and trembling, at least some of the waking day. When you get a person to emerge into life, away from his dependencies, his automatic safety in the cloak of someone else's power, what joy can you promise him with the burden of his aloneness? When you get a person to look at the sun as it bakes down on the daily carnage taking place on earth, the ridiculous accidents, the utter fragility of life, the powerÂlessness of those he thought most powerful—what comfort can you give him from a psychotherapeutic point of view? Luis Buimel likes to introduce a mad dog into his films as counterpoint to the secure daily routine of repressed living. The meaning of his symÂbolism is that no matter what men pretend, they are only one acÂcidental bite away from utter fallibility. The artist disguises the incongruity that is the pulse-beat of madness but he is aware of it. What would the average man do with a full consciousness of abÂsurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror. Sartre has called man a "useless passion" because he is so hopelessly bungled, so deluded about his true condition. He wants to be a god with only the equipment of an animal, and so he thrives on fantasies. As Ortega so well put it in the epigraph we have used for this chapter, man uses his ideas for the defense of his existence, to frighten away reality. This is a serious game, the defense of one's existence—how take it away from people and leave them joyous?
Absolute | Character | Discussion | Dread | Faith | Feelings | Heart | Hero | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Mystery | Psychology | Religion | Self | Service | Time | Value |
And so the arrival at new possibility, at new reality, by the deÂstruction of the self through facing up to the anxiety of the terror of existence. The self must be destroyed, brought down to nothing, in order for self-transcendence to begin. Then the self can begin to relate itself to powers beyond itself. It has to thrash around in its finitude, it has to "die," in order to question that finitude, in order to see beyond it. To what? Kierkegaard answers: to infinitude, to absolute transcendence, to the Ultimate Power of Creation which made finite creatures. Our modern understanding of psycho-dynamics confirms that this progression is very logical: if you admit that you are a creature, you accomplish one basic thing: you demolish all your unconscious power linkages or supports. As we saw in the last chapter—and it is worth repeating here—each child grounds himself in some power that transcends him. Usually it is a combination of his parents, his social group, and the symbols of his society and nation. This is the unthinking web of support which allows him to believe in himself, as he functions on the automatic security of delegated powers. He doesn't of course admit to himself that he lives on borrowed powers, as that would lead him to quesÂtion his own secure action, the very confidence that he needs. He has denied his creatureliness precisely by imagining that he has secure power, and this secure power has been tapped by unconsciously leaning on the persons and things of his society. Once you expose the basic weakness and emptiness of the person, his helpÂlessness, then you are forced to re-examine the whole problem of power linkages. You have to think about reforging them to a real source of creative and generative power. It is at this point that one can begin to posit creatureliness vis-a-vis a Creator who is the First Cause of all created things, not merely the second-hand, interÂmediate creators of society, the parents and the panoply of cultural heroes. These are the social and cultural progenitors who themÂselves have been caused, who themselves are embedded in a web of someone else's powers.
Children | Justify | Object | Rivalry | World | Worth | Value |