This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann
The artist's view of the world and mankind is that which seeks as far as possible to lose itself in its object, illuminating it not from the outside by some light foreign to it, but from within, deriving light from its own core.
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True sages are those who give what they have, without meanness and without secret!
The Iron Rule of prudence for an Istanbulite Woman: If you are as fragile as a tea glass, either find a way to never encounter burning water and hope to marry an ideal husband or get yourself laid and broken as soon as possible. Alternatively, stop being a tea-glass woman!
Patience is not to clench your teeth and do nothing. It means to be prescient enough to trust the end result of the process. What is patience? It means looking at the thorns and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so myopic as to see the result. Whoever loves God remains patient, because he knows that it takes time incomplete moon to be full.
Enough | God | Impatience | Means | Patience | Time | Trust | God |
When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue not by wire pulling and demagoguery not by the arts of popularity not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.
Better | Character | Evil | Folly | Government | Ignorance | Indifference | Indolence | Knowledge | Law | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Responsibility | Suffering | Time | World | Wrong | Government |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Annabelle heard him. Wild with affront, she scrambled heavily to her feet with a cowlike movement and dashed down the naked stairs. ‘Mother, mother’ she wailed. Her mother came out of the library. ‘Oh, mother, John said Damn to me!’
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I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.
What I’m saying is, my friends, one ought to be able to let go. If a path does not please us, instead of insisting on going that specific way, of making our selfishness the guide, we ought to forsake. The books we cannot write, the films we cannot shoot, the projects we cannot develop, the jobs we cannot pursue and the people who no longer love us. Being able to let go, at times, is the most beautiful of all!
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science.
The one happiness is to shut one's door upon a little room, with a table before one, and to create; to create life in that isolation from life.
Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell.
Change | Contentment | Daughter | Day | Life | Life | Light | Looks | Mind | Nothing | People | Power | Regret | Safe | Time | Will | Wonder | Wrong | Think |
Perhaps it took a stranger to make a woman like her speak her mind.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Towards the end of April, a breath from the north blew cold down Milan platforms to meet the returning traveler. Uncertain thoughts of home filled the station restaurant where the English sat lunching uneasily, facing the clock.
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The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion.
The popular tendency is to listen approvingly to the most extreme statements and claims of politicians and orators who seek popularity by declaring their own country right in everything and other countries wrong in everything.
Human nature | Nature | Peace | War |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
A fragrant, faint impropriety, orris-dust of a century, still hangs over parts of this neighbourhood; glass passages lead in from high green gates, garden walls are mysterious, laburnums falling between the windows and walls have their own secrets. Acacias whisper at night round airy, ornate little houses in which pretty women lived singly but were not always alone. In the unreal late moonlight you might hear a ghostly hansom click up the empty road, or see on a pale wall the shadow of an opera cloak… Nowadays things are much tamer: Lady Waters could put up no reasoned objection to St. John’s Wood.
In responding to this poignant cry for help, Einstein offered no easy solace, and this very fact must have heartened the student and lightened the lonely burden of his doubts. Here is Einstein's response. It was written in English and sent from Princeton on 3 December 1950, within days of receiving the letter:
Individual | Meaning | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Society | Society |