This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment.
Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken ismade whole again, what is soiled is made clean.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Day |
It is easier to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man's insignificance in the long eternity of time; the desert speaks of his insignificance right now.
Eternity | Insignificance | Man | Right | Time |
George Moore, fully George Augustus Moore
Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
Men |
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world; he is a highly suggestible mind hypnotized by reality.
He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself.
Bible | Day | Eternity | Repentance | Sin | Time | Will | Work | Bible |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Day | Eternity | Instinct | Time | Will | Wise | Intellect | Think |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in every moment.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
Esteem | Eternity | God | Man | Men | Present | System | Truth | Will | God |