This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The self can become a Buddha, a being of perfect wisdom and compassion; and the environment can become a perfect Buddha-land, wherein no one suffers pointlessly and all are there for the happiness of all." - Tibetan Book of the Dead NULL
"Sense gratifications provide momentary pleasures but yield pain for long time." - Uttaradhyayana Sutra
"Ballade of Dead Actors - Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours -- friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one and all. The curtain falls, the play is played: The Beggar packs beside the Beau; The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; The Thunder huddles with the Snow. Where are the revellers high and low? The clashing swords? The lover's call? The dancers gleaming row on row? Into the night go one and all." - William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
"I heard an Angel singing When the day was springing: ‘Mercy, Pity, Peace Is the world’s release.’ Thus he sang all day Over the new-mown hay, Till the sun went down, And haycocks lookèd brown. I heard a Devil curse Over the heath and the furze: ‘Mercy could be no more If there was nobody poor, ‘And Pity no more could be, If all were as happy as we.’ At his curse the sun went down, And the heavens gave a frown. [Down pour’d the heavy rain Over the new reap’d grain; And Misery’s increase Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.]" - William Blake
"His whole life is an epigram smart, smooth and neatly penn’d, Plaited quite neat to catch applause, with a hang-noose at the end. " - William Blake
"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"For washed in life's river, my bright mane forever shall shine like the gold as I guard o'er the fold." - William Blake
"The Captain approached him coolly and deliberately. “You will prosecute no one now, you bloody informer”, said he; “you will convict no more boys for taking an ould rusty gun an’ pistol from you, or for giving you a neighbourly knock or two into the bargain.” Just then from a window opposite him, proceeded the shrieks of a woman who appeared at it with the infant in her arms. She herself was almost scorched to death; but with the presence of mind and humanity of her sex, she was about to thrust the little babe out of the window. The Captain noticed this, and with characteristic atrocity, thrust, with a sharp bayonet, the little innocent, along with the person who endeavoured to rescue it, into the red flames, where they both perished. This was the work of an instant." - William Carleton
"Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them." - William Cobbett
"The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
"Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"The world is full of men who do big things, but when you meet ’em they are not outstanding personalities. Pretty near everybody is almost alike." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"The men who can manage men, manage the men who manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all." - Will and Ariel Durant
"The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"The book begins with the clang of a cell door closing in a GPU prison. It ends with a shot in the back of the head in a murky passageway of the prison cellar. It moves with the speed, directness, precision and some of the impact of a bullet." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one’s life well and happily." - Wilhelm Reich
"If one studies the history of sexual suppression one finds that it does not exist in the early stages of culture formation. Therefore, it cannot be the prerequisite of culture. Rather, it appears at a relatively late stage of culture, at the time of the development of authoritarian patriarchy and of class distinctions. At that stage, the sexual interests of all begin to serve the profit interests of a minority. This process has assumed a solid organizational form in the institutions of patriarchal marriage and patriarchal family. With the suppression of sexuality the emotions undergo a change: a sex-negating religion begins to develop which gradually builds up its own sex-political organization, the church in all its forms, which has no other goal than that of eradicating sexual pleasure. This has its sociological reason in the exploitation of human work which sets in at this stage." - Wilhelm Reich
"In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism. According to Marx, the social condition "capitalism" does not consist in the existence of individual capitalists, but in the existence of the specific "capitalist mode of production", that is, in the production of exchange values instead of use values, in wage work of the masses and in the production of surplus value, which is appropriated by the state or the private owners, and not by the society of working people. In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority." - Wilhelm Reich
"It is said culture requires slaves. I say that no cultured society can be built with slaves. This terrible Twentieth Century has made all cultural theories from Plato down seem ridiculous. Little man, there has never been a human culture." - Wilhelm Reich
"My discovery of the Life Energy is today widely known nearly all over the globe, in hundreds of institutions, whether acclaimed or cursed. It can no longer be stopped by anyone, no matter what happens to me." - Wilhelm Reich
"People should be very careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement." - Wilhelm Reich
"Sexual inhibition alters the structure of the economically suppressed individual in such a manner that he thinks, feels and acts against his own material interests." - Wilhelm Reich
"The absolute and static were even taken over by such dynamically oriented psychological schools as the Freudian in the form of the permanent unconscious ideas. In Jung, the unconscious psychic life was enlarged to the static "racial unconscious" and to the static "collective unconscious". Along with the static viewpoint, these psychologies took over the idea of guilt, even after their separation from philosophy. In so doing, they fell into a cul de sac from which there was no way out." - Wilhelm Reich
"The character-armored, mechanistically rigid person thinks mechanistically, produces mechanistic tools, and forms a mechanistic conception of nature. The armored person who feels his orgonotic body excitations in spite of his biological rigidity, but does not understand them, is mystic man. He is interested not in material but in spiritual things. He forms a mystical, supernatural idea about nature. Both the mechanist and the mystic stand inside the limits and conceptual laws of a civilization which is ruled by a contradictory and murderous mixture of machines and gods. This civilization forms the mechanistic-mystical structures of men, and the mechanistic-mystical character structures keep reproducing a the mechanistic-mystical civilization. Both mechanists and mystics find themselves inside the framework of human structure in a civilization conditioned by mechanistics and mysticism. They cannot grasp the basic problems of this civilization because their thinking and philosophy correspond exactly to the condition they project and continue to reproduce. In order to realize the power of mysticism, one has only to think of the murderous conflict between Hindus and Muslims at the time India was divided. To comprehend what mechanistic civilization means, think of the age of the atom bomb." - Wilhelm Reich
"The present critical state of international human affairs requires security and safety from nuisance interferences with efforts toward full, honest, determined clarification of man’s relationship to nature within and without himself; in other words, his relationship to the Law of Nature. It is not permissible, either morally, legally, or factually, to force a natural scientist to expose his scientific results and methods of basic research in court. This point is accentuated in a world crisis where biopathic men hold in their hands power over ruined, destitute multitudes." - Wilhelm Reich
"Either define the moment or the moment will define you." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, be not afraid of my body." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"The new history begins as history always begins, in a word spoken. "Now Yahweh said to Abram." How else could history begin? That is the way with individual histories when persons are addressed and called into being, into a new consciousness. Such a word spoken gives identity and personhood, and we could not have invented it. It is the voice of the prophet-or the poet if you wish-who calls a name, bestows a vision, summons a pilgrimage. This is not the detached prattle of a computer; not the empty language of a quota or a formula or a rule; but it is a word spoken that lets one not be the same..." - Walter Brueggemann
"We are given a picture of the frantic, aggressive policies of the empire that are propelled by anxiety:" - Walter Brueggemann
"What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truths from its errors." - Walter Lippmann
"The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over." - Walter Savage Landor
"Well I remember how you smiled to see me write your name upon the soft sea-sand . . . "O! what a child! You think you're writing upon stone! I have since written what no tide shall ever wash away, what men unborn shall read o'er ocean wide and find Ianthe's name again." - Walter Savage Landor
"Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be mis-appraised." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The managers at fault periodically report on the lesson they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"If... I can by any lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain." - Washington Irving
"Every fall that you take is a gift, and every relapse is a glorious opportunity — after all, without them you can’t manifest the energy to get to a higher place." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Have you ever noticed when you’re in the presence of certain people that you feel better about yourself? Their compassionate energy has the noticeably pleasant impact of simply making you feel really good about yourself. You’ll impact others with this energy of compassion as you develop your connection to intention." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"How are you today? Better than yesterday. That's a good way to be; not better than anyone else, just better than you were." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"If you meet someone whose soul is not aligned with yours, send them love and move along." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"The picturing process is the way to create a prosperity consciousness within your mind. No one can ever take that away from you." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Your friends are God's way of apologizing for your relatives." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Equanimity is the ability to experience the changes in our lives, circumstances, and feelings and still remain calm, centered and unmoved. The image most often used to illustrate the quality of equanimity is that of a mountain. The mountain sits there as the sun shines on it, the rain drenches it, it is covered with snow and struck by lightning. Through it all, through all the changing conditions, the mountain remains unwavering. As we cultivate equanimity within ourselves, we learn to be more like the mountain, finding that place of strength and courage within ourselves that enables us to withstand the slings and arrows of being human without feeling overwhelmed by fear." - Wayne Muller
"An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars." - Wendell Berry
"The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it." - Wendell Berry
"The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars... I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did. I felt their completeness as whatever they had been in the world." - Wendell Berry