This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Though the light and comfort of the outward world keeps even the worst men from any constant strong sensibility of that wrathful, fiery, dark and self-tormenting nature that is the very essence of every fallen unregenerate soul, yet every man in the world has more or less frequent and strong intimations given him that so it is with him in the inmost ground of his soul. How many inventions are some people forced to have recourse to in order to keep off a certain inward uneasiness, which they are afraid of and know not whence it comes? Alas, it is because there is a fallen spirit, a dark, aching fire, within them, which has never had its proper relief and is trying to discover itself and calling out for help at every cessation of worldly joy.
Devotion | Means | Piety | Spirit | Temper | Wisdom | World |
Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices, abstentions]... because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them: they practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves, they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of a self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self.
Wisdom |
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
Belief | Courage | Eternal | Light | Means | Nature | Need | Trust | Wisdom | World |
Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and forms of living and praying. But this kind of praying, which takes all its thoughts and words only from the state of our hearts, makes it impossible for us to be strangers to ourselves. The strength of every sin, the power of every evil temper, the most secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of any or all our virtues, is with a noonday clearness forced to be seen, as soon as the heart is made our prayer book, and we pray nothing, but according to what we read, and find there.
Distinction | Glory | God | Grace | Haste | Man | Nature | Piety | Religion | Service | Spirit | Will | God | Old |
Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.
However great the advantages which nature bestows on us, it is not she alone, but fortune in conjunction with her, which makes heroes.
Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.†the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.
Acquaintance | Attainment | Books | Correctness | Grace | Language | Lying | Men | Merit | Purity | Reading | Style | Taste | Writing |
O monstrous arrogance, thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:-- brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, as thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st!
O, monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack! King Henry IV. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.
Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL
Should you desire great tranquility, prepare to sweat white beads.
When asked about the importance of receiving teachings on dedication, Gape Lama answered, "Whatever Dharma practice we engage in, large or small, we must dedicate the merit. If we fail to dedicate, then whatever merit we have accumulated can be lost very easily in a moment of anger, or in giving rise to any afflictive emotion or action."
There is no mockery like the mockery of that spirit which looks around in the world and believes that all is emptiness.
The world is a spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell GOD with the wrong blocks.
Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL
You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?
America can't afford a Supreme Court justice -- let alone a chief justice -- with Roberts' record of eroding the rights of workers and turning back the clock on civil rights. There's no mistaking that he's a stealth right-wing candidate.