This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
Well, we never expected this! they all say. No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous, and scornful. But when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether! How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am.
Attention | Beginning | Enlightenment | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Order | People | Wishes | World | Old |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
She thought a major proposed to her, though he seemed rather old, but he was so much confused and had such a mumbly moustache she could not be certain.
As soon as the words were out, sorry. Was preferable to the man considered extremely being a woman, as no other. It should not have to show any of it or another, it is imperfect, vulnerable person like everyone else. If you know that wearing a heart of glass, it will break.
Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown
How old were you when you first realized that your parents were human? That they were not omnipotent, that what they said did not, in fact, go, they had dreams and feelings and scars? Or have you not realized that yet? Do you still call your parents and have a one-sided conversation with them, child to parent, not adult to adult?
Ability |
Writers write without thinking. These theories are applied later, when literary critics and scholars weigh every sentence of the writer. And when you read these theories, people have the impression that novelists deliberately create stories like this, which is not true.
Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.
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 leave.
People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your inner contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
Attention | Change | God | Important | Life | Life | Soul | God | Think |
I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.
Attention | Change | Control | Death | Ego | God | Heart | Important | Life | Life | Light | Little | Love | Marriage | Mind | People | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Relationship | Right | Soul | Space | Time | Universe | Will | God | Afraid | Think | Understand |
I do not need to love you to prove that I love myself!!
Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.
Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me.
Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.
Attention | Divinity | Longing | Meditation | Mysticism | Nature | Religion | Self | Spirituality | Time | Friends |
We are born with a body that experiences pain and comfort, a heart that suffers and feels joy, a mind that strives and is peaceful, a spirit that yearns for both solitude and communion with others, and a contract on earth that has a beginning and an end. Each one of us knows this, and yet, each one of us spends much of our time swimming against the current of life's reality. The spiritual path teaches us how to float on our backs, relaxed and aware, in the waters of reality. The Buddhists define spirituality as shamatha, or 'tranquil abiding.'
Art | Attention | Culture | Model | Mourning | Patience | Loss | Art |
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an unrequited affection.
All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.