This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.
Asked who was the worst president, he responded, Oh, there were so many of them. Certainly the silliest was Reagan. The most empty. [George H.W.] Bush is in the running for the worst.
Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'... Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln.
There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.
People |
The elimination of rent, interest, profit and the production of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people. That is the demand.
Equality | Philosophy | Principles | Race |
In adverse hours the friendship of the good shines most; each prosperous day commands its friends.
I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.
Judgment | Understand |
But woe to him, who left to moan, reviews the hours of brightness gone.
The new man is born too old to tolerate the new world. The present conditions of life have not yet erased the traces of the past. We run too fast, but we still do not move enough. He looks but he does not contemplate, he sees but he does not think. He runs away from time, which is made of thought, and yet all he can feel is his own time, the present.
Individual | Life | Life | Solitude |
We are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavor to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behavior to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes.
Human nature | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |
It is a good thing to be rich and strong, but it is a better thing to be loved.
Today not even a universal fire could make the torrential poetic production of our time disappear. But it is exactly a question of production, that is, of hand-made products which are subject to the laws of taste and fashion.
Slavery has as many shapes among us as there are things we need.
The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined.
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.
Absolute | Beginning | Language | Love | Mysticism | Philosophy | Truth |