This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).
Focus | Knowledge | Mind | Reason | Research | Unique | Work | Following |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
A real taste for fairy-stories was wakened by philology on the threshold of manhood, and quickened to full life by war.
Belief | Uncertainty | Wrong |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this.... Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Back now to the mountain! cried Thorin. We have little time to lose. And little food to use! cried Bilbo, always practical on such points. In any case he felt that the adventure was, properly speaking, over with the death of the dragon.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo?s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering.
Abuse | Chance | Effort | Exploit | Good | Little | Office | People | Price | Right | Child |
With art and knavery we live through half the year; with knavery and art we live through the other.
Generosity | Selfishness | Time | Unkindness |
You don't go to heaven in a carriage.
Day | Existence | Golden Rule | Rule | Scripture | Story | Study | World | Golden Rule |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
At least for a while the road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
Change | Children | Controversy | Labor | Public | Work | Worry | Child | Learn |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.
Compassion | Intolerance | Meaning | Means | People | Pity | Practice | Religion | Time | World |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.
Ambiguity | Better | Compassion | Enemy | Failure | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Little | Means | People | Religion | Sense | Tradition | Understanding | Work | Failure |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.
Absolute | Compassion | Equity | Heart | Honor | Suffering | Work | World |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Life implies constant activity, and the vital principle was accordingly regarded as something essentially active, constantly controlling and therefore interfering with physical tendencies towards disintegration of organic structure, and building up new organic structure in the process of nutrition and reproduction.