This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
Wants |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Reality |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.
Cooperation | Goals | Risk | Sense | Wants | Will | Leader |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
Because the source of human conflict, social injustice, and exploitation is in the human psyche, we must begin there to transform society. We investigate the mind, the human psyche, not as an end in itself, as a self-centered activity, but as an act of compassion for the whole human race. We must move deep to the source of decay in society so that the new structures and social systems we design will have a sufficiently healthy root system that they will have an opportunity to flourish. The structures of society need to be transformed, but the hidden motivations and assumptions on which the structures rest need to be transformed as well. The individual and collective values and motives that give sanction to the injustice and exploitation of modern society must become the focus of change as much as the socioeconomic and political structures. We no longer will be able to allow the motivations and values that underlie personal and collective behavior to remain hidden and unexamined. It serves no lasting purpose for us to change the surface structures and behaviors while the deep foundations remain decadent and unsound.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.
Reality | Reflection |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
What can we say to a man who tells you that he would rather obey God than men, and that therefore he is sure to go to heaven for butchering you? Even the law is impotent against these attacks of rage; it is like reading a court decree to a raving maniac. These fellows are certain that the holy spirit with which they are filled is above the law, that their enthusiasm is the only law that they must obey.
Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love. Compassion cannot be cultivated; it derives neither from intellectual conviction nor from emotional reaction. It is simply there when the wholeness of life becomes a fact that is truly lived.
Absolute | Compassion | Life | Life | Nothing | Oneness | Principles | Reality | Will |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
However, the painter of the future will be a colorist, such as has never yet existed. Manet was working towards it, but as you know the Impressionists have already got a stronger color than Manet. This painter of the future- I can't imagine him doing
Reality |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
One of the most difficult things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortunes, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be forever, will it be for eternity?
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life... looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!' But this does not exclude making what is possible...
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the draft turns into the sketch and the sketch into the painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Only he can be an artist who has a religion all his own - an original way of viewing infinity.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge, are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? — not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?