This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits. Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity of this sort ; so that we may without hesitation lay down as our first proposition the following, that the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to plasticity of the organic materials of which their bodies are composed." - William James
"There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough." - William James
"Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God." - William Law
"Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"It has become a conviction with me that psychology may in the long run do much to change the conception of the fundamental nature of the religious life, which, on the whole, is now too generally made a matter of doctrine. It is too intellectual At the doors of most churches one is met by required beliefs in a particular conception of God, in a speculative theory about the divinity of Christ, definite ideas concerning sin and salvation, the efficacy of ordinances, and the claims of supernatural revelation. What people are really seeking is access to refreshing fountains of life, sources of strength and guidance. They crave association with people and institutions which may convey to them a sense of what is most worthwhile in life and what may furnish impulsion toward real and enduring values. They know pretty well what those values are when allowed to let their own deepest desires express themselves." - Edward Scribner Ames
"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
"If your friend is (like) honey, don't lick it all." - Egyptian Proverbs
"There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight." - Elias Canetti
"Spirituality is a brave search for the truth about existence, fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of life." - Elizabeth Lesser
"What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do." - Elizabeth Lesser
"The idea of feminine authority is so deeply embedded in the human subconscious that even after all these centuries of father-right the young child instinctively regards the mother as the supreme authority. He looks upon the father as equal with himself, equally subject to the woman's rule. Children have to be taught to love, honor, and respect the father, a task usually assumed by the mother." - Elizabeth Gould Davis
"The act of exploring what the men are, and moreover the separation of the good from the evil, is visitation; and the good are then removed, and the evil are left behind." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
"The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary." - Emil M. Cioran
"In disbelief, people wondered who Commander Esterhazy's protectors were. First of all, behind the scenes, Lt Colonel du Paty de Clam was the one who had concocted the whole story, who kept it going, tipping his hand with his outrageous methods. Next General de Boisdeffre, then General Gonse, and finally, General Billot himself were all pulled into the effort to get the Major acquitted, for acknowledging Dreyfus's innocence would make the War Office collapse under the weight of public contempt. And the astounding outcome of this appalling situation was that the one decent man involved, Lt. Colonel Picquart who, alone, had done his duty, was to become the victim, the one who got ridiculed and punished. O justice, what horrible despair grips our hearts? It was even claimed that he himself was the forger, that he had fabricated the letter-telegram in order to destroy Esterhazy . But, good God, why? To what end? Find me a motive. Was he, too, being paid off by the Jews? The best part of it is that Picquart was himself an anti-Semite. Yes! We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay." - Emile Zola
"Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!" - Emile Zola
"This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind." - Emma Goldman
"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
"A good beginning makes a good end." - English Proverbs
"A good beginning makes a good ending." - English Proverbs
"A good deed is never lost." - English Proverbs
"Doubt is the beginning of wisdom." - English Proverbs
"The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act. ... What would the average man (sic) do with a full consciousness of absurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror." - Ernest Becker
"And this was the price you paid for sleeping together." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Hem, you know I don't think that owner's wife where you live likes me. She wouldn't let me wait upstairs for you.' 'I'll tell her,' I said. 'Don't bother. I can always wait here. It's very pleasant in the sun now, isn't it?' 'It's fall now,' I said. 'I don't think you dress warmly enough.' 'It's only cool in the evening,' Evan said. 'I'll wear my coat.' 'Do you know where it is?' 'No. But it's somewhere safe.' 'How do you know?' 'Because I left the poem in it." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic qulaity. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"What anyone else has or does not have, has nothing to do with you." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"So we must try to distinguish between two questions that are often confused in this discussion. Is the existence of God a truth demonstrable by natural reason, so that it is knowable and known with certitude? Without a doubt the answer to this first question is “yes.” The second question is whether everyone can consider his natural reason infallible in its effort to demonstrate rationally the existence of God? The merciless criticism of the proofs of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Descartes, Malebranche and many others are timely reminders of the need for modesty. Are we keener philosophers than they? That is the whole question. Modesty is not skepticism. So we should not be afraid to let our mind pursue the proof of GodÂ’s existence until we reach the greatest possible certitude, but we should keep intact our faith in the word that reveals this truth to the most simple folk as well as to the most learned. Here it is well to meditate on the very complex and nuanced passage in ST 2-2.2.4: “Is it necessary to believe what can be proved by natural reason?” The answer is in the affirmative: “We must accept by faith not only what is above reason but also what can be known by reason.”" - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
"You said they had found the secret of happiness because they had never heard that love can be a sin." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"In reality art is always for everyone and for no one." - Eugenio Montale
"A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger." - Euripedes NULL
"Living in the present means squarely accepting and responding to it as God's moment for you now while it is called "today" rather than wishing it were yesterday or tomorrow." - Evelyn Underhill
"There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not." - Evelyn Underhill
"Gladness, in some instances, springs from a natural buoyancy of temperament, and is quite consistent with shallowness and superficiality of character. In other cases it is coincident with the swift flow of the currents of the blood, and ceases when the stream flows more slowly and begins to stagnate. Or it is due to gifts which an exceptional good fortune showers into the laps of favoured mortals. Gladness of this sort comes with happiness and departs with it." - Felix Adler
"Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When I have an argument with someone, even with someone I am not very close with, I can't sleep at night thinking about it. It's terrible. But I still manage speak out frankly because I have also been gifted with the ability to read people. I can sense when they start to get irritated with me, and then, I shift." - Hans Rosling
"A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"If there is one thing left that I would like to do, it's to write something really beautiful. And I could do it, you know. I could still do it." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane