This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you---how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions.
Beauty | Conversation | Little | Space | Spirit | Wise | Beauty |
Every idea needs a visible envelope, every principle needs a habitation, every dogma needs a temple. A church is God between four walls.
From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us.
People | Time | Friendship | Blessed |
One should make good people their friends. One, who keeps good friends, benefits and lives in peace.
Deeds | Good | Intelligence | Sound | Deeds |
It is impossible for the fools to tread the path of learned ones.
The bull with a thousand horns who rose out of the sea, with the aid of him, the mighty one, do we put the folks to sleep.
What I am trying to say is this: We must all learn many things from you, from how to educate our offspring, how to elect our representatives, all the way to how to organize our economic life so that it will lead to prosperity and not poverty. But it doesn’t have to be merely assistance from the well-educated, the powerful and the wealthy to someone who has nothing to offer in return. We too can offer something to you: our experience and the knowledge that has come from it.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.
Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.
Witness |
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, memex will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
Sound |
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.
Order | Prediction | Reality | Sound |
Abuse of any one generally shows that he has marked traits of character. The stupid and indifferent are passed by in silence.
Glory | Indispensable | Mind | Sound |