This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
It’s not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
The mass and majesty of this world, all that carries weight and always weighs the same lay in the hands of others; they were small and could not hope for help and no help came: what their foes like to do was done, their shame was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride and died as men before their bodies died.
Heart | Imagination | Indignity | Think |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Present-day students are often puzzled at the apparent contradictions of Southern slavery. One hears, on the one hand, of the staid and gentle patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, ease and happiness; on the other hand one hears of barbarous cruelty and unbridled power and wide oppression of men. Which is the true picture? The answer is simple: both are true. They are not opposite sides of the same shield; they are different shields.
Art | Beauty | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Price | Science | Art | Beauty |
If the hero is not a person, the emblem of him, even if xenophon, seems to stand taller than a person stands, has a wider brow, large and less human eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body of a primitive.
If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.
Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire
We wanted to step off our island and add the color of the third world. We got gold cigarette paper and stuck it around our teeth. We really did look like pirates and dressed to look the part.
Torture |
Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire
I was still interested in the youth rebellion but never-the-less I stopped being a victim. Stopped trying to attack the establishment realizing that it takes too much of your energy.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I got out of the car and slammed its door. How matter-of-fact, how square that slam sounded in the void of the sunless day! Woof, commented the dog perfunctorily. I pressed the bell button, it vibrated through my whole system. Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne. From what depth this re-nonsense? Woof, said the dog. A rush and a shuffle, and woosh-woosh went the door. Couple of inches taller. Pink-rimmed glasses. New, heaped-up hairdo, new ears. How simple! The moment, the death that I had kept conjuring up for three years was as simple as a bit of dry wood. She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her head looked smaller (only two seconds had passed really, but let me give them as much wooden duration as life can stand), and her pale-freckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless felt dress and sloppy felt slippers. 'We-e-ell!' she exhaled after a pause with all the emphasis of wonder and welcome. ‘Husband at home?' I croaked, fist in pocket. I could not kill her, of course, as some have thought. You see I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
It is nothing but a kind of a micro-cosmos of communism - all that psychiatry', rumbled Pnin ... 'Why not leave their private sorrow to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Philosophers never stood in need of Homer or the Pharisees to be convinced that everything is done by immutable laws; that everything is settled; that everything is the necessary effect of some previous cause.
Earth | Nothing | Order | Religion | Sacrifice | Work | Youth | Youth |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
And I is high tide. Swell. He arches his back. I feel a fresh miss that cableaz? that proud steed that rider hits him with spurs and Harness it then. You, that I wear on his back, tell me what enemy is the one who came to see us, while our rings clatter on the pavement? 's Death. Death is the enemy. I can run against her spear lying down, with long hair flying behind me like tresses of a young man as you gallop Percival's tresses in India. Stick spurs into the horse's ribs. Unbridled and ruthless, I can run against you, Death! waves crashing to shore.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.
Existence | Receive | Superiority |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Dim it is, haunted by ghosts of white marble, to whom the organ for ever chaunts. If a boot creaks, it's awful; then the order; the discipline. The verger with his rod has life ironed out beneath him. Sweet and holy are the angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high sounds of voice and organ. Forever requiem—repose.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
But the root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not simple as our friends would have us to meet their needs. Yet love is simple.