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
Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world.
Compassion | Effort | God | History | Hope | Little | Need | People | Policy | Religion | Right | Will | God |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to.