This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"What would I do if you never came here?' But I was ALWAYS coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can call the good energy with a smile." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"You should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice, staying strong, instead." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'" - Elizabeth Lesser
"Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; they have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"It is not merely the likeness which is precious ... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing ... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say ... that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist's work ever produced." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Men could not part us with their worldly jars, nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,-- and, heaven being rolled between us at the end, we should but vow the faster for the stars." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"You believe in God, for your part?--that He who makes can make good things from ill things, best from worst, as men plant tulips upon dunghills when they wish them finest." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Words cannot describe the indignation a proud woman feels for her sex in disfranchisement." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"If there were two princes in Christendom who had good will and courage, it would be very easy to reconcile the religious difficulties; there is only one Jesus Christ and one faith, and all the rest is a dispute over trifles." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"And the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through tears." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"I write about different things than other columnists. But I do it out of a sense of news judgment. The major stories today are the family and what I call life-and-death issues." - Ellen Goodman
"People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning." - Ellen Goodman
"Well, I do not think that women should train in the Ann Coulter School of Opinion-Hurling. I avoid leaving teeth marks on innocent ankles. We don't need more women — or men — in the Strunk and Food Fight Stylebook. There are many ways to be heard. But writing out loud, saying what you think on the op-ed page or in the blogosphere, on talk radio or in politics, requires a little hide-toughening." - Ellen Goodman
"I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see." - Dorothy Parker
"They say of me, and so they should, it's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends accumulating dividends and making enviable names in science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, keep doing things I think are nice, and though to good I never come inseparable my nose and thumb." - Dorothy Parker
"Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"There is granted to everyone after death the opportunity of amending his life, if it is at all possible." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work." - Emil Nolde
"Contemptuous pride of knowledge." - Émile Souvestre
"Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people's cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext." - Emile Zola
"How happy is the little stone that rambles in the road alone, and doesn't care about careers, and exigencies never fears; whose coat of elemental brown a passing universe put on; and independent as the sun, associates or glows alone, fulfilling absolute decree in casual simplicity." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes-to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not shut; they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips and sharp, white teeth sneered too!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Though earth and man were gone, and suns and universes ceased to be, and Thou wert left alone, every existence would exist in Thee." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"You talk of her mind being unsettled - how the devil could it be otherwise, in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity. He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things. Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal." - Emma Goldman
"Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia." - Emma Goldman
"The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land." - Emma Goldman
"When a child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition." - Emma Goldman
"It is as though subjective life in the form of consciousness consisted in being itself losing itself and finding itself again so as to possess itself by showing itself, proposing itself as a theme, exposing itself in truth." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"Evil, sin, the fall of man, in fact, is essentially the attempt to negative this Truth in our thoughts. We try to live apart from God. We try to do without Him. We act as though we had life of our own; as separate minds; as though we could have plans and purposes and interests separate from His. All this, if it were true, would mean that existence is not one and harmonious, but a chaos of competition and strife. It would mean that we are quite separate from our fellow man and could injure him, rob him, or hurt him, or even destroy him, without any damage to ourselves, and, in fact, that the more we took from other people the more we should have for ourselves. It would mean that the more we considered our own interests, and the more indifferent we were to the welfare of others, the better off we should be. Of course it would then follow naturally that it would pay others to treat us in the same way, and that accordingly we might expect many of them to do so. Now if this were true, it would mean that the whole universe is only a jungle, and that sooner or later it must destroy itself by its own inherent weakness and anarchy. But, of course, it is not true and therein lies the joy of life." - Emmet Fox
"This Indwelling Power, the Inner Light, or Spiritual Idea, is spoken of in the Bible as a child, and throughout the Scriptures the child symbolically always stands for this. Bible symbolism has its own beautiful logic, and just as the soul is always spoken of as a woman, so this, the Spiritual Idea that is born to the soul, is described as a child." - Emmet Fox
"Treat the "Because" when you find yourself thinking that your Prayer cannot be answered for any reason whatever - treat that reason. When something says to you that you cannot demonstrate "because" - treat the because. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I have not enough understanding - treat for understanding. When you think, I cannot treat because I have a Headache - treat the headache. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I am full of doubts - treat the doubts. When you think I cannot demonstrate because it is now too late - treat against the time illusion. When you think, I cannot demonstrate in this part of the country - treat against the space illusion. When you think, I cannot demonstrate this thing because of my age - treat your age belief. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because someone else will hinder me - treat the belief in a power other than God. No matter what name the because may give itself, it is still your belief in limitation. Be loyal to God and know that He and He alone has all power. Treat the because." - Emmet Fox
"When you are praying for your true place, it is well to remember that the full demonstration may not come in one move, but more likely after a series of stages. Now, if you despise these intermediate steps, and think “this is a little better, but it is not really what I want,†you will keep the demonstration back. Neither should you accept a small improvement as being all that you can hope to get. The scientific attitude is to see the stepping stone as a stepping stone; to bless it, and give thanks for it, and to continue praying for the next step." - Emmet Fox
"A wonder lasts but nine days." - English Proverbs
"All you need is love." - English Proverbs
"The devil is not so black as he is painted." - English Proverbs