This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.
Day | Mind | Need | Noise | Peace | Silence | Wants | Will |
We are not alien visitors to this planet, after all but natural residents and relatives of every living entity here. This earth is where we came from and where we'll all end up when we die, and during the interim, it is our home, And there's no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don't at least marginally understand our home.
Ego | Fortune | Life | Life | Mind | Perfection | Right | Silence |
Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.
Ego | Mind | Perfection | Silence |
Where did you get the idea you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You're a constituent--you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So, put your opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me--it will at least be taken into consideration.
Elizabeth Janeway, born Elizabeth Ames Hall
I have a problem about being nearly sixty: I keep waking up in the morning and thinking I'm thirty-one.
So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism. Christianity simply does not share that deep and consistent historical reverence toward matrimony. Lately it has, yes- but not originally. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked that flat-out whoring but only very marginally.
Care | Death | Depression | Friend | Lending | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Mind | Mistake | Need | Nothing | Office | Reason | Reflection | Sadness | Security | Time | Waiting | Will | Writing |
One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'
Age | Better | Cause | Earth | Enlightenment | Fame | Famous | Fortune | Good | Illusion | Kill | Labor | Light | Man | Mind | Money | People | Present | Problems | Shame | Terrorism | Work | Worry | Instruction | Understand |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
My mortal foe can no ways wish me a greater harm than England's hate; neither should death be less welcome unto me than such a mishap betide me.
Mind |
But you will imagine that it is best that He should at once enable you to see clearly. If it is, you may be sure He will do it. He never makes mistakes. But He often deals far differently with His disciples. He lets them grope their way in the dark until they fully learn how blind they are, how helpless, how absolutely in need of Him. What His methods will be with you I cannot foretell. But you may be sure that He never works in an arbitrary way. He has a reason for everything He does. You may not understand why He leads you now in this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that perfection is stamped on His every act.
All the men of the Old Testament were polygamists, and Christ and Paul, the central figures of the New Testament, were celibates, and condemned marriage by both precept and example.
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
He knows so little and knows it so fluently.
Earth | Force | Man | Mind | Revelation |
I pride myself on my capacity to perceive the transitory character of everything. An odd gift which spoiled all my joys; better: all my sensations. I have decided not to oppose anyone ever again, since I have noticed that I always end by resembling my latest enemy.
Mind |
For years I have been crouching in corners hissing small and ladylike anathema of Theodore Dreiser.
Mind |
An individual dies ... when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within, and takes refuge there.
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
There is granted to everyone after death the opportunity of amending his life, if it is at all possible.
Earnestness | Mind | Power | Spirit | Work |
One of the reasons the doctors gave for hospitalizing me against my will was that I was ‘gravely disabled.’ To support this view, they wrote in my chart that I was unable to do my Yale Law School homework. I wondered what that meant about much of the rest of New Haven.