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
A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita.
Sound | Tenderness | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not. (The Vane Sisters)
Common Sense | Existence | Light | Mother | Panic | People | Sense | Time | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.
Battle | Books | Growth | Life | Life | Loafing | Man | Mind | Obsession | Pleasure | Rest | Science | Search | Struggle | World | Old |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic—one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was all really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.
Death | Detachment | Heart | Love | Order | Peace | Sanity | Thought | Woman | World | Thought |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
This, and much more, she accepted - for after all living did mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case – mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the endless waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The world that I came to a place of boring to the point of unbearable, and there is no way to live without working whatever the motive or the desired result.
World |
We are related organically, and we have to live that relationship. To be attentive to the dynamics of the inner being is not creating a network of escapes to avoid responsibility. It is not continuing a false superiority that I am sensitive and you are not. It is simply recognizing that our personal relationships and collective relationships are miserable affairs, and that these relationships stimulate fear and anxieties and throw us on the defensive. However much we yearn for peace, emotionally we are not mature enough for peace, and our immaturity affects everything we do, every action we take, even the most worthy of actions.
Body | Emotions | Friend | Motives | Wholeness | Will | World | Intellect |
We become aware of all that is happening within us, of the different emotions arising within us, for example if we begin to get angry we are aware of it and so the grip of anger loosens its hold over us.
Beauty | Darkness | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nothing | Peace | People | Rest | Suffering | Universe | Wonder | World | Beauty |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
All right Mister, let me tell you what winning means... you're willing to go longer, work harder, give more than anyone else.
Better | Dedication | Quiet | World |
There have been superficial blendings, as spiritual groups take up social service work and social activists join religious organizations, but a real integration of social action and spirituality at a deep, innovative level has not yet happened to any significant degree. The history of human development has been fragmentary, and the majority of people have been content with the fragmentation. It has the sanction of society. Each fragment of society has its own set of values. Among many social activists, anger, hatred, violence, bitterness, and cynicism are accepted norms, even though the effectiveness of these motivations for peaceful living has been seriously put in doubt. And indifference to the needs of the poor has had shocking acceptance among generations of spiritual people who considered higher states of consciousness much more significant than the misery of the starving millions.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Theology is to religion what poisons are to food.
World |
Whether you try to influence the mind through ideas and concepts, or through discipline and vows, or through drugs, you are trying to stimulate artificially a state of silence. Perhaps if we are friendly with the mind, if we watch the mind, if we understand the mind, if we let it wander, let it roam about wherever it wants, let it exhaust its momentum by wandering, without scolding, without praising, without
Awareness | Defense | Force | Global | Heart | Responsibility | Theories | Truth | Understanding | Will | Witness | World | Awareness |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.
Commitment | Heart | Man | Nothing | Strength | Will | World |