This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system." - William James
"It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own." - William James
"Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us." - William James
"The inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. . . Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withall, they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them. . . The part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself." - William James
"The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other." - William James
"There is little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum and chronograph philosophers. They mean business, not chivalry. . . . the experimental method has quite changed the face of science so far as the latter is a record of mere work done." - William James
"To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nest full of eggs was not utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her." - William James
"What do believers in the Absolute mean by saving that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business." - William James
"When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new." - William James
"The room was much as he had left it, festeringly untidy, though the effect was muted a little by a thick layer of dust. Half-read books and magazines nestled among piles of half-used towels. Half-pairs of socks reclined in half-drunk cups of coffee. What once had been a half-eaten sandwich had now half-turned into something that Arthur didn’t entirely want to know about. Bung a fork of lightning through this lot, he thought to himself, and you’d start the evolution of life off all over again." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"The Universe is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?" - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"Well, sir, I think it's just as well that they are being phased out of the war effort, and that we are now going to detonate the supernova bomb. In the very short time since we were released from the time envelope-' 'Get to the point''The robots aren't enjoying it, sir.''What?''The war sir, it seems to be getting them down there's a certain world-weariness.''Well, that's all right, they're meant to be helping to destroy it.' 'yes, well they're finding it difficult, sir. They are afflicted with a certain lassitude. They're just finding it hard to get behind the job. They lack oomph.''What are you trying to say?' 'Well, I think they're very depressed about something, sir.' 'What on Krikkit are you talking about?' 'Well, in a few skirmishes they've recently, it seems that they go into battle, raise their weapons to fire and suddenly think, why bother? What, cosmically speaking, is it all about? And they just seem to get a little tired and a little grim.' 'And then what do they do?' 'Er, quadratic equations mostly, sir. Fiendishly difficult ones by all accounts. And then they sulk.' 'Sulk?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Whoever heard of a robot sulking?' 'I don't know, sir." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars, - not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment seat." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"The way we see what God is only a reflection of the way we see Anfsnna. If not God brings to our minds to fear and blame, it means that a great deal of fear and blame is flowing in our souls, but if we saw God full of love and compassion , we will be well" - Elif Safak
"However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research." - Albert Einstein
"Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But both are equally true." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over... himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, i just know it." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Why must everything be repeat and repeat, never finish, never resting? You work so hard one day, but the next day you must only work again. You eat, but the next day, you are already hungry. You find love, then love goes away. You are born with nothing, you work hard, then you die with nothing. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"You have no idea how strong my love is!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
"And I said in underbreath — All our life is mixed with death, — And who knoweth which is best? And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness, — Round our restlessness, His rest." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"The loves of men but vary in degrees-- they find no new expression for the flame." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Each time I think of the essential, I seem to glimpse it in silence or explosion, in stupor or exclamation. Never in speech." - Emil M. Cioran
"Life is nothing; death, everything. Yet there is nothing which is death, independent of life. It is precisely this absence of autonomous, distinct reality which makes death universal; it has no realm of its own, it is omnipresent, like everything which lacks identity, limit, and bearing: an indecent infinitude." - Emil M. Cioran
"The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death." - Emil M. Cioran
"How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!" - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!' 'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.' 'No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"My great thought is in himself. If all else perished and he remained I should still continue to be and if all else remained and he were annihilated the universe would turn into a mighty stranger. I would not seem apart of it." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"You are a dog in the manger, Cathy, and desire no one to be loved but yourself!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"If we put this whole progression in terms of our discussion of the possibilities of heroism, it goes like this: Man breaks through the bounds of merely cultural heroism; he destroys the character lie that had him perform as a hero in the everyday social scheme of things; and by doing so he opens himself up to infinity, to the posÂsibility of cosmic heroism, to the very service of God. His life thereby acquires ultimate value in place of merely social and culÂtural, historical value. He links his secret inner self, his authentic talent, his deepest feelings of uniqueness, his inner yearning for absolute significance, to the very ground of creation. Out of the ruins of the broken cultural self there remains the mystery of the private, invisible, inner self which yearned for ultimate significance, for cosmic heroism. This invisible mystery at the heart of every creature now attains cosmic significance by affirming its connection with the invisible mystery at the heart of creation. This is the meaning of faith. At the same time it is the meaning of the merger of psychology and religion in Kierkegaard's thought. The truly open person, the one who has shed his character armor, the vital lie of his cultural conditioning, is beyond the help of any mere "science," of any merely social standard of health. He is absolutely alone and trembling on the brink of oblivion—which is at the same time the brink of infinity. To give him the new support that he needs, the "courage to renounce dread without any dread . . . only faith is capable of," says Kierkegaard. Not that this is an easy out for man, or a cure-all for the human condition—Kierkegaard is never facile. He gives a strikingly beautiful idea:" - Ernest Becker
"There is a power greater than you in the universe, and you can use it." - Ernest Shurtleff Holmes
"At the lowest stage, the rude--we may say animal--phase of prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilization, and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise little by little to the more highly civilized nations. To these alone--of the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian--are we indebted for what is usually called "universal history." This last, extending over somewhat less than six thousand years, represents a period of infinitesimal duration in the long millions of years of the organic world's development." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"Most people have put anything that earns money in the category of the things that I HAVE to do. And that is why the money often comes so hard." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"The idea of success for most people, revolves around money or the acquisition of property or other possessions, but we consider a state of joy as the greatest achievement of success. And while the attainment of money and wonderful possessions certainly can enhance your state of joy, the achievement of a good-feeling physical body is by far the greatest factor for maintaining a continuing state of joy and Well-Being." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"There are only two emotions from our perspective ....... The one that feels good, that feeling of hope or happiness or love. That good feeling, that positive emotion, is guidance saying, that which you are thinking right now is in alignment with what you are wanting." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"The very best thing that can happen is that, in despairing of philosophy, they remember that God did not choose to save men through metaphysics, so that its loses be not their loss." - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
"We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand." - Eugen Drewermann