This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
If I were to think of and dwell on disastrous possibilities, I could do nothing. I throw myself headlong into my work, and come up again with my studies; if the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.
Worth |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Poor little place,' he murmured with a sigh. She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Belief | Body | Children | Courage | Determination | Effort | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Need | Opportunity | Past | Poverty | Power | Reality | Talking | Will | World | Worth |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
Beginning | Determination | Future | Power | Sense | Worth |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and dither falling in love, meeting together. It's true they are much less bound by ceremony, convention, than we are. Royal words meet with common words. English words marry French words, German words. Indian words, Negro words.
Change | Good | Hate | Merit | Will | Words | Worth | Think |
Edward was always a good listener, since his own form of self-expression then consisted in making unearthly and to me quite meaningless sounds on his small violin. I remember him, at the age of seven, as a rather solemn, brown-eyed little boy, with beautiful arched eyebrows which lately, to my infinite satisfaction, have begun to reproduce themselves, a pair of delicate question-marks, above the dark eyes of my five-year-old son. Even in childhood we seldom quarreled, and by the time that we both went away to boarding-school he had already become the dearest companion of those brief years of unshadowed adolescence permitted to our condemned generation.
There are people who observe the rules of honor as we observe the stars: from a distance.
Worth | Friendship |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.
Argument | Chance | Courage | Fighting | Kill | Man | Manliness | Men | Need | Organization | People | Purpose | Purpose | Worth | Old | Think |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world.
Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
Merit is created through deeds that benefit society, such as building temples and repairing bridges and roads. Virtue means having a good conscience and not being ashamed before Heaven or people because one has neither deceived others nor cheated oneself.
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
What is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr.Wernher von Braun!
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The real friend tells the bitter truth. (Used to soften the blow when a friend needs to give bitter advise.)
One must ask about the delight of opium from one who smokes it.