This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light.
Waiting |
Javert's ideal was not to be humane, not to be great, not to be sublime; it was to be irreproachable. Now he had just failed.
Waiting |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.'
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how
Cost | Health | Indispensable | Man | Meaning | Waiting | Will |
During war times not only one should himself take part in it but also encourage the courageous to do so by creating awareness, zeal and enthusiasm for the war in the society.
Responsibility | Truth | Waiting | War |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What matters is to make the best of any given situation. "The best," however, is that which in Latin is called optimum--hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for (l) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand
Waiting |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
A vision without resources is an hallucination.
If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has this possession.
Day | Duty | Good | Hope | Impression | Little | Manliness | Thinking | Waiting |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Okay, we have just passed through the Michener zone, and , assuming that narcolepsy hasn’t leadened our lids, that we’ve not been Lao-this’d and Lao-that’ed into a comatose state, we’re now in a position, as we rejoin the narrative flow, to conclude that Fan Nan Nan was a Lao Theung community. Are we not?
Of all creatures in this visible world, light is the most glorious; of all light, the light of the sun without compare excels the rest.
Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly MahÄyÄna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly HÄ«nayÄna. These are temples where only the HÄ«nayÄna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the MahÄyÄna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [HÄ«nayÄna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna] practices are carried out.
Man | Object | People | Thought | Time | Waiting | Wrong | Child | Thought |
In the same winter quarter, beginning in January, 1896, I taught a class for the Disciples Divinity House, in the divinity school of the university, on the theology of Alexander Campbell. This enabled me to work over again the relation of his thought to that of John Lock, which had so much interested me while I was working on my thesis the previous year. With a class of eight graduate students it was possible to have reports and discussions on various problems. Our excitement ran high, for the “discovery†of the relation between Campbell and Locke gave new meaning to Disciple history and placed it in a stream of thought that was influencing modern science and philosophy with what Locke himself called “a new way of ideas.†It was the empirical and pragmatic temper applied in religious matters. This meant not only a lessened emphasis upon traditional theology and speculative metaphysics but a refection of their assumptions and methods. Like Locke, Campbell also rejected the “inner light†and “enthusiasm†as grounds for religious assurance. Both held to the possibility of revelation, but both insisted that any alleged revelation must be brought to the test of reason.
Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown
I’m just like this speed bump in the middle, slowing everyone down because I keep fucking up.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
The third day was nearly all wet, though it cleared towards evening and a fine sunset crimsoned the canal. Today it had come on about lunch time, a different rain; finer, gentler, more inexorable, that made the air woolly, left a muddy taste in one’s mouth and dulled everything.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Emmeline’s world, that had hung shining throughout the week like a bubble on some divine breath, contracted suddenly to this room – staring, positive, full of shelves and tables – the scene of some terror from which she had lately fled.
I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance.
Care | History | Love | Man | Relationship | Romance | Time | Waiting | Victim |