This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In doubt and emotional attachment, this person understands nothing; with this leash, these feet are tied up." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"Love others and serve them; then you can win My Love." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"One, who earns leadership of the masses by working ceaselessly for people's welfare finally realizes that he has been rewarded with many added advantages." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"That which pleases His Will has come to pass; no one else can do anything." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"The sun showers light to one and all without any discrimination. Similarly, humans should also engage himself in doing works for the benefit of the society." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"You may have huge hordes of men in the army; but they are useful only when the few Generals who lead them know where they are and whether they should proceed and how to overcome the enemy, whose strength and weakness they have comprehended. Hordes of people sing, recite, adore, worship, praise and prostrate, but these are the soldiers." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
"It also happens, rather often, that politicians do not actually talk to each other but only to one another's shadows as they appear in the media." - Václav Havel
"This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique ... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard." - Václav Havel
"In cultivation, even if you do not become possessed by a demon, you must still have genuine wisdom and Dharma- selecting vision." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
"The reason we haven't obtained a response in our practice of Buddhism is that we have too many doubts." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
"I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
"Test each sect by its best or its worst, as you will,--by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"Simon Stimson: ...That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness." - Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
"At once, good night-- stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once." - William Shakespeare
"Cold indeed, and labor lost: then farewell heat, and welcome frost!" - William Shakespeare
"The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one." - William James
"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." - William James
"Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his Glory." - William Law
"This useful, charitable, humble employment of yourselves is what I recommend to you with greatest earnestness, as being a substantial part of a wise and pious life." - William Law
"Epicurus, we are told, left behind him three hundred volumes of his own works, wherein he had not inserted a single quotation; and we have it upon the authority of Varro’s own words that he himself composed four hundred and ninety books. Seneca assures us that Didymus the grammarian wrote no less than four thousand; but Origen, it seems, was yet more prolific, and extended his performances even to six thousand treatises. It is obvious to imagine with what sort of materials the productions of such expeditious workmen were wrought up: sound thoughts and well-matured reflections could have no share, we may be sure, in these hasty performances. Thus are books multiplied, whilst authors are scarce; and so much easier is it to write than to think! But shall I not myself, Palamedes, prove an instance that it is so, if I suspend any longer your own more important reflections by interrupting you with such as mine?" - William Melmoth, wrote under pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne
"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The consequence has been (in too many physical systems), to level the study of nature, in point of moral interest, with the investigations of the algebraist." - Dugald Stewart
"Pursued my humor not pursuing his, and gladly shunned who gladly fled from me." - William Shakespeare
"The illness I suffer from is serious and persistent and my life may be over any day. Whenever I think about you, I become sad and depressed. In my leisure time I have written Precepts for My Daughters in seven chapters. My daughters, each of you make yourself a copy; perhaps it will be of some use and benefit to you. Do your very best once you have left home!" - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
"Leading a sheltered existence inside a palace, I am not aware of all the going-ons among the people. If there are any matters that cause anguish to the people, you should report them to me without failing." - Sejong the Great, aka King Sejong, family name Yi, given name Do NULL
"When you keep company with an eminent master, his qualities will automatically influence you." - Padmasambhava, literally "Lotus-Born",aka "Second Buddha", better known as Guru Rinpoche (lit. "Precious Guru") or Lopon Rinpoche NULL
"Gerda edged, breathlessly, round the door. Only me, she said, and sank with a puff of billowing skirts into the white fur rug at her patron’s feet. I’ve hadsuch a time; you must have thought I was lost! It made that buzzing, gone-away noise at me every time I dialled: you know how a telephone makes one feel, Lady Waters, quite in disgrace!…" - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
"Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain: I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant." - William Shakespeare
"Some grief shows much of love, but much of grief shows still some want of wit." - William Shakespeare
"Some sins do bear their privilege on earth, And so doth yours; your fault was not your folly." - William Shakespeare
"Ah, clear they see and true they say that one shall weep, and one shall stray." - Dorothy Parker
"I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them." - Dorothy Parker
"The sole means of protecting your solitude is to offend everyone, beginning with those you love." - Emil M. Cioran
"I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail." - Emile Zola
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun." - Emma Goldman
"Concretely, the relationship of identification is the encumbrance of the ego by the self, the care that the ego takes of itself, or materiality. The subject - an abstraction from every relationship with a future or with a past - is thrust upon itself, and is so in the very freedom of its present. Its solitude is not initially the fact that it is without succor, but it’s being thrown into feeding upon itself, its being mixed in itself. This is materiality." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"Someone may object that material things extend beyond the realm of our present perception. It belongs to their very essence to be more than what is intimated or revealed in a continuum of subjective aspects at the moment of perception. They are also there when we do not perceive them: they exist in themselves." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"The capriciousness of destiny was a favorite subject with the old-fashioned novelists. In their three volume world, people's lives were at the mercy of trifling accidents from day to day. A person's whole life was spoilt because one letter was stolen or went astray. 'I'he hero rose from obscurity to wealth and fame through meeting a casual stranger in a railroad car, or through saving someone from drowning at the seashore. One false step ruined an otherwise promising career. One turn of fortune's wheel solved all problems for someone else. All this is nonsense. We are not at the mercy of accidents for there are no accidents, and trifles have only trifling effects. In the long run you demonstrate your character; and you cannot ultimately miss the mark for which you are fitted, because of any outer accident. A particular incident may give you a temporary advantage or cause you passing grief or inconvenience, but it does not change your life's story. An energetic and enterprising man who attends to his business will make a success of his life whether he meets a helpful stranger in a railroad car or not - and whether a particular letter concerning him is lost or not. The miscarriage of a letter may deprive him of a particular position; meeting with a helpful and influential stranger may bring his success a little sooner; but if he has the qualities demanded for success he will succeed in any case. And if he lacks those qualities no help from the outside can make him successful. No nation is destroyed by the loss of one battle. When a nation is weak in natural resources and divided within itself, it cannot stand; but it is this structural weakness that brings about its fall. If it were united, well organized, and armed, it could lose that battle and still win the war. Your own character makes or breaks you. This is true of the individual, of a nation, of a party, of a church, or of any institution. If you seem to yourself to be lacking in certain necessary qualities, if your character seems to lack strength, ask God to give you what you need - and He will. You can build any quality into your mentality by meditating upon that quality every day." - Emmet Fox
"The first thing that we have to realize is a fact of fundamental importance, because it means breaking away from all the ordinary prepossessions of orthodoxy. The plain fact is that Jesus taught no theology whatever. His teaching is entirely spiritual or metaphysical. Historical Christianity, unfortunately, has largely concerned itself with theological and doctrinal questions which, strange to say, have no part whatever in the Gospel teaching. It will startle many good people to learn that all the doctrines and theologies of the churches are human inventions built up by their authors out of their own mentalities… There is absolutely no system of theology of doctrine to be found in the Bible; it simply is not there." - Emmet Fox
"Revolutionaries filling the world banging for the world to not sleep weighed on the bodies of the poor." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"A fool and water will go the way they are diverted." - Ethiopian Proverbs
"We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God sticks with us." - Eugene Peterson
"In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That's what happens when you take writing too seriously." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties — differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests — they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane