This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
Vasana perishes through well conducted deliberation and truth. Through the absorption of Vasanas mind attains quiescence like a lamp without oil. - Mukti Upanishad
Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. this was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man, and offers him — in new clothing — his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
Experience | Memory | Nothing |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
Children | Dependence | Energy | Glory | Judgment | Love | Memory | Mind | Order | Success | Teach | Truth |
The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?
Association | Memory | Mind | Work | Association |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The fool is like those people who think themselves rich with little.
Grace |
The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.
Attention | Good | Impression | Memory |
It seems unspeakably important that all persons among us, and especially the student and the writer, should be pervaded with Americanism. Americanism includes the faith that national self-government is not a chimera, but that, with whatever inconsistencies and drawbacks, we are steadily establishing it here. It includes the faith that to this good thing all other good things must in time be added. When a man is heartily imbued with such a national sentiment as this, it is as marrow in his bones and blood in his veins. He may still need culture, but he has the basis of all culture. He is entitled to an imperturbable patience and hopefulness, born of a living faith. All that is scanty in our intellectual attainments, or poor in our artistic life, may then be cheerfully endured: if a man sees his house steadily rising on sure foundations, he can wait or let his children wait for the cornice and the frieze. But if one happens to be born or bred in America without this wholesome confidence, there is no happiness for him; he has his alternative between being unhappy at home and unhappy abroad; it is a choice of martyrdoms for himself, and a certainty of martyrdom for his friends.
Affectation | Change | Choice | Enough | Literature | Little | Memory | Spirit | Wonder | Work | Poem |
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.
Aptitude | Conscience | Contempt | Conversation | Freedom | Memory | Talent |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If death wants me, let him ride up on a pale mount, ashes in his mouth, ice in his testicles. Frankly, I do not like the way death does business.
Attention | Cause | Day | Death | Humor | Irony | Light | Memory | Religion | Sense | Thought | Will | Thought |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
According to my mother, some sort of phantom stole into the room where I lay in my cradle and struck me on the head with a silver hammer. [In response to “To what do you attribute that marvelous imagination of yours?]
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell; though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, yet grace must still look so. Malcolm, Scene III