This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Song of an Old General - When he was a youth of fifteen or twenty, He chased a wild horse, he caught him and rode him, He shot the white-browed mountain tiger, He defied the yellow-bristled Horseman of Ye. Fighting single- handed for a thousand miles, With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude. ...Granted that the troops of China were as swift as heaven's thunder And that Tartar soldiers perished in pitfalls fanged with iron, General Wei Qing's victory was only a thing of chance. And General Li Guang's thwarted effort was his fate, not his fault. Since this man's retirement he is looking old and worn: Experience of the world has hastened his white hairs. Though once his quick dart never missed the right eye of a bird, Now knotted veins and tendons make his left arm like an osier. He is sometimes at the road-side selling melons from his garden, He is sometimes planting willows round his hermitage. His lonely lane is shut away by a dense grove, His vacant window looks upon the far cold mountains But, if he prayed, the waters would come gushing for his men And never would he wanton his cause away with wine. ...War-clouds are spreading, under the Helan Range; Back and forth, day and night, go feathered messages; In the three River Provinces, the governors call young men -- And five imperial edicts have summoned the old general. So he dusts his iron coat and shines it like snow- Waves his dagger from its jade hilt in a dance of starry steel. He is ready with his strong northern bow to smite the Tartar chieftain -- That never a foreign war-dress may affront the Emperor. ...There once was an aged Prefect, forgotten and far away, Who still could manage triumph with a single stroke.
Angels | Good | Knowing | News | Past | Peace | People | Speech | Time | World | Think |
The mind, relaxing into needful sport, should turn to writers of an abler sort, whose wit well managed, and whose classic style, give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
There is nothing as easy as denouncing. It don’t take much to see that something is wrong but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again.
Speech |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Candor | Curiosity | Elegance | Freedom | Good | Novelty | Resentment | Self-esteem | Soul | Speech | Sympathy | Temper | Tenderness | Novelty |
We have been sent dangerously by God's address-called by name, entrusted with risky words, and empowered with authority. We are to tell the truth openly, work for justice, and stand in solidarity with our neighbors. The cost is high, but the purposes are those of the Holy God.
The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Homeric and the pre-Homeric Greeks, like oral peoples generally, practiced public speaking with great skill long before their skills were reduced to an "art", that is, to a body of sequentially organized, scientific principles which explained and abetted what verbal persuasion consisted in. Such an "art" is presented in Aristotle"s Art of Rhetoric. Oral cultures, as has been seen, can have no "arts" of this scientifically organized sort. The "art" of rhetoric, though concerned with oral speech, was, like other "arts," the product of writing.
Birth | Individual | Literature | Man | Personality | Regard | Sense | Sound | Speech | Words | World | Think |
Master, let me walk with thee in lowly paths of service free; tell me thy secret; help me bear the strain of toil, the fret of care.
Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call “the economy” or “the free market” is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of the last century, we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
Existence | Individual | Qualities | Speech |
Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore, the snake has left its skin upon the floor. Key West sank downward under massive clouds and silvers and greens spread over the sea. The moon is at the mast-head and the past is dead.
Speech |
Out of the first warmth of spring, and out of the shine of the menlocks, among the bare and crooked trees, she found a helping from the cold, like a meaning in nothingness.
That other one wanted to think his way to life, sure that the ultimate poem was the mind, or of the mind, or of the mind in these Elysia, these days, half earth, half mind; half sun, half thinking of the sun; half sky, half desire for indifference about the sky.