This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We puzzle as to whether the universe is bounded or extends forever; whether, indeed, it may only be one universe among many. We speculate as to whether our universe began in a vast explosion, whether it pulsates between utter compression and wide diffusion, whether it is self-renewing and thus unchanged forever. And we are humble. But science teaches more than this. It continually reminds us that we are still ignorant and there is much to learn. Time and space are interconnected in strange ways; there is no absolute simultaneity. Within the atom occur phenomena concerning which visualization is futile, to which common sense, the guidance from our everyday experience, has no application, which yield to studies by equations that have no meaning except that they work. Mass and energy transform one into another, Gravitation, the solid rock on which Newton built, may be merely a property of the geometry of the cosmos. Life, as its details unfold before us, becomes ever more intricate, emphasizing more and more our wonder that its marvelous functioning could have been produced by chance and time. The human mind, merely in its chemical and physical aspects, takes on new inspiring attributes.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex, you may have heard about his odd complex. His name appears in Freud's index 'cause he loved his mother.
Death has nothing terrible which life has not made so. A faithful Christian life in this world is the best preparation for the next.
True conservatism is substantial progress; it holds fast what is true and good in order to advance in both. - recast away the old is not of necessity to obtain the new. - To reject anything that is valuable, lessens the power of gaining more. That a thing is new does not of course commend; that it is old does not discredit. The test question is, "Is it true or good?"
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness ... Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.
Sense |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.
Effort | Government | Public | Sense | Will | Worth | Government | Think |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
The last fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child, the simplicity of the children of God. It is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. It is the naiveté which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busy-ness for the Kingdom of God—yet how many are caught, and arrested in development, within this adolescent development of the soul's growth! The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy. It lives in the Fellowship of the Transfigured Face. Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not agonize and fret and strain, but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time with the joy and assurance of Eternity. Knowing fully the complexity of men's problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to Him. Like the mercy of Shakespeare, "'tis mightiest in the mightiest." But it binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration of Him who is all in all.
Absolute | God | Humility | Nothing | Obedience | Order | Passion | Sense | Soul | Wonder | God |
As yet, it must be owned, this daring expectation is but feebly reflected in our books. In looking over any collection of American poetry, for instance, one is struck with the fact that it is not so much faulty as inadequate. Emerson set free the poetic intuition of America, Hawthorne its imagination. Both looked into the realm of passion, Emerson with distrust, Hawthorne with eager interest; but neither thrilled with its spell, and the American poet of passion is yet to come. How tame and manageable are wont to be the emotions of our bards, how placid and literary their allusions! There is no baptism of fire; no heat that breeds excess. Yet it is not life that is grown dull, surely; there are as many secrets in every heart, as many skeletons in every closet, as in any elder period of the world’s career. It is the interpreters of life who are found wanting, and that not on this soil alone, but throughout the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not just to say, as someone has said, that our language has not in this generation produced a love-song, for it has produced Browning; but was it in England or in Italy that he learned to sound the depths of all human emotion?
Absence | Consciousness | Culture | Impulse | Man | Regret | Strength |
To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
Art | Literature | Man | Obligation | Right | Sense | Spirit | Study | Will | Instruction | Art | Leadership |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
Action | Confidence | Fear | Life | Life | Obligation | Security | Sense | Spirit | Time |
The Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear.
Contemplation | Sense | Contemplation |