This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In order to be one, you must first be two." - Esther Perel
"Love is an exercise in selective perception." - Esther Perel
"Neither prophets nor priests nor psalmists offer quick cures for the suffering: we don’t find any of them telling us to take a vacation, use this drug, get a hobby. Nor do they ever engage in publicity cover-ups, the plastic-smile propaganda campaigns that hide trouble behind a billboard of positive thinking. None of that the suffering is held up and proclaimed – and prayed." - Eugene Peterson
"Our days are busy with little leisure for frills. We have work to do, interests to pursue, books to read, letters to write, the telephone to answer, errands to run, children to raise, investments to tend to, the lawn to mow, food to prepare and serve, the garbage to take out. We don’t need God’s help or counsel in doing any of these things. God is necessary for the big things, most obviously creation and salvation. But for the rest we can, for the most part, take care of ourselves. That usually adds up to a workable life, at least when accompanied by a decent job and a good digestion. But—it is not the practice of resurrection; it is not growing up in Christ, it is not living in the company of the Trinity." - Eugene Peterson
"I love every bone in their heads." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"Today, with the abundance of books available, it is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read. … Feed only on the best. As John Wesley’s mother counseled him: ‘Avoid whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, … increases the authority of the body over the mind." - Ezra Taft Benson
"One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds." - Italian Proverbs
"And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair! She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken; a slender Elf woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien