This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Can you not see? Or will ye not observe the strangeness of his altered countenance? With what a majesty he bears himself, how insolent of late he is become, how proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself? We know the time since he was mild and affable, and if we did but glance a far-off look, immediately he was upon his knee, that all the court admired him for submission; but meet him now and, be it in the morn, when everyone will give the time of day, he knits his brow and shows an angry eye and passeth by with stiff unbowèd knee, disdaining duty that to us belongs. Small curs are not regarded when they grin, but great men tremble when the lion roars, and Humphrey is no little man in England. First note that he is near you in descent, and should you fall, he is the next will mount. Me seemeth then it is no policy, respecting what a rancorous mind he bears and his advantage following your decease, that he should come about your royal person or be admitted to your highness' council. By flattery hath he won the commons' heart; and when he please to make commotion, 'tis to be feared they all will follow him. Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted. Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden and choke the herbs for want of husbandry. The reverent care I bear unto my lord made me collect these dangers in the duke. If it be fond, call it a woman's fear; which fear if better reasons can supplant, I will subscribe and say I wronged the duke. My lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York, reprove my allegation if you can, or else conclude my words effectual. Henvry VI, Part II, Act iii, Scene 1" -
"What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?" - William Godwin
"I personally gave up the Absolute . . . I fully believe in taking moral holidays." - William James
"In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly." - William James
"Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him." - William James
"Our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do." - William James
"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." - William James
"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." - William James
"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." - William James
"When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast..." - William James
"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." - William Law
"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.." - William Law
"Through the want of a sincere intention of pleasing God in all our actions, we fall into such irregularities of life as, by the ordinary means of grace, we should have power to avoid." - William Law
"Weak and imperfect men shall, notwithstanding their frailties and effects, be received as having pleased God, if they have done their utmost to please Him." - William 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." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"We confess our little faults to persuade ourselves we have no great ones." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"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." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"We often forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those we bore." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"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." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"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." - Dugald Stewart
"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." -
"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." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
"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." - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
"Let a woman retire late to bed, but rise early to duties; let her nor dread tasks by day or by night. Let her not refuse to perform domestic duties whether easy or difficult. That which must be done, let her finish completely, tidily, and systematically, When a woman follows such rules as these, then she may be said to be industrious." - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
"All phenomena are intricately and dynamically interrelated." - Dong Zhongshu, aka Dǒng Zhòngshū or Tung Chung-shu
"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." - 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." - Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
"The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer." - Elias Canetti
"Child of earth and earthly sorrows--child of God and immortal hopes--arise from thy sadness, gird up the loins of thy mind, and with unfaltering energy press toward thy rest and reward on high." - Elias L. Magoon
"Try not to resist the changes that come in your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not be afraid that your life is turned upside down. How do you know that what you're used to is better than the things that will come?" - Elif Safak
"In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought." - Elihu Root
"Science has been arranging, classifying, methodizing, simplifying, everything except itself. It has made possible the tremendous modern development of power of organization which has so multiplied the effective power of human effort as to make the differences from the past seem to be of kind rather than of degree. It has organized itself very imperfectly. Scientific men are only recently realizing that the principles which apply to success on a large scale in transportation and manufacture and general staff work to apply them; that the difference between a mob and an army does not depend upon occupation or purpose but upon human nature; that the effective power of a great number of scientific men may be increased by organization just as the effective power of a great number of laborers may be increased by military discipline." - Elihu Root
"But this morning in meditation, after I heard the lion roar YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS, I came out of that meditation cave like warrior queen." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Here’s another example of the difference in our worldviews. A family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, Dear God, that family needs grace. She replied firmly, That family needs casseroles, and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I also know that I won't go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don't think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth. Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason - for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons- sometimes out of pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really-in speaking and in eating (with a concentration on gelato)." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, Kate approached the lead Mongolian singer and asked, What are your songs about? He replied, Our songs are about the same things that everyone else's songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Poem second, but if they left me wear a garment woven of grass soprano to this place to have done if they left me embrace every tree Eucalyptus in a forest Ganesh swear I did have nominated Dew these days got rid of the scum Hvvt my chin on the bark of trees , believing they stalk teachers I cannot go away as it should if I was left eating the dust of this place on a platter of birds' nests for semi-finished dish and the rest slept on all night" - Elizabeth Gilbert
"The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Then, I will be a real Italian girl, instead of a total American who still can't hear someone across the street to his friend Marco without wanting instinctively to yell back Polo!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
"This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"We are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, begging for pennies from every passerby, unaware that his fortune was right under him the whole time. Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I have a card stuck on my refrigerator that shows a woman standing in reverence before an open freezer door, saying, 'Amazing! Perfect ice cubes again.' That's the kind of simple rapture I am talking about. I realize we are not put on this earth to stand around open freezers ranting like idiots about ice cubes. But a good quesiton to ask yourself is this: If perfect ice cubes or an evening sky or an old song on the radio has not made your heart flip-flop lately, why not? What is keeping you from feeling the rapture?" - Elizabeth Lesser
"I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton