This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Next to reading, meditation, and prayer, there is nothing that so secures our hearts from foolish passions, nothing that preserves so holy and wise a frame of mind, as some useful, humble employment of ourselves.
The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day; but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular proposition, — the proposition, namely, that the course of nature is uniform. That nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it.
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
Mind | Nature | Order | Religion | Sacrifice | Surrender | Happiness |
The progress of these terrors is plainly shown us in our Lord's agony in the garden, when the reality of this eternal death so broke in upon Him, so awakened and stirred itself in Him, as to force great drops of blood to sweat from His body... His agony was His entrance into the last, eternal terrors of the lost soul, into the real horrors of that dreadful, eternal death which man unredeemed must have died into when he left this world. We are therefore not to consider our Lord's death upon the Cross as only the death of that mortal body which was nailed to it, but we are to look upon Him with wounded hearts, as being fixed and fastened in the state of that twofold death, which was due to the fallen nature, out of which He could not come till He could say, It is finished; Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit..
Eternal | God | Law | Love | Order | Rule | Self-love | Will | God |
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.
We do not regret the loss of our friends by reasons of their merit, but because of our needs and for the good opinion that we believed them to have held of us.
We confess our little faults to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.
We often forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those we bore.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
Generosity | Order |
It ought not to be the leading object of any one to become an eminent metaphysician, mathematician, or poet, but to render himself happy as an individual, and an agreeable, a respectable, and a useful member of society.
Mind | Order | Power | Understand |
Our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers, which is both healthful and good husbandry.
Order |
Playing in the wanton air: through the velvet leaves the wind all unseen, gan passage find; that the lover, sick to death, wish'd himself the heaven's breath, 'air,' quoth he, 'thy cheeks may blow; air, would I might triumph so! But, alas! My hand hath sworn ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn: vow, alack! For youth unmeet: youth, so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me that I am forsworn for thee thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were; turning mortal for thy love.
Order |
Dong Zhongshu, aka Dǒng Zhòngshū or Tung Chung-shu
All phenomena are intricately and dynamically interrelated.
Cleanliness | Devotion | Love | Order | Gossip |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Among these, the five organs of cognition are concerned with specific and non-specific objects. Speech is concerned with sound; the rest are concerned with all five objects.
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
An attendant came up, bowing deeply. The white flowers far off yonder are known as 'evening faces, he said. A very human sort of name--and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in.It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were evening faces at the sagging eaves. A hapless sort of flower. Pick one off for me, will you? The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan. Put it on this. It isn't much of a fan, but then it isn't much of a flower either.
Man | Order | Public | Resentment | Will |
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 |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
If husband and wife have the habit of staying together, never leaving one another, and following each other around within the limited space of their own rooms, then they will lust after and take liberties with one another. From such action improper language will arise between the two This kind of discussion may lead co licentiousness. But of licentiousness will be born a heart of disrespect to the husband. Such a result comes from not knowing that one should stay in one's proper place.
Authority | Conduct | Control | Husband | Men | Nothing | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Relationship | Wife |