This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
We, the decent people of the world. . . believe that this is a beautiful universe and that it is made for love and not for hate; for peace and not war; for freedom and not slavery; for order and not riot; for compassion and not violence; for happiness and not misery.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, She hers, he his, pursuing.
Glory | Metaphysics |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The new recruits, even boys—the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements—they buckle the straps carefully; outdoors arming—indoors arming—the flash of the musket-barrels; the white tents cluster in camps—the arm'd sentries around—the sunrise cannon, and again at sunset; arm'd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves; (How good they look, as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders! How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces, and their clothes and knapsacks cover'd with dust!) The blood of the city up—arm'd! arm'd! the cry everywhere; the flags flung out from the steeples of churches, and from all the public buildings and stores; the tearful parting—the mother kisses her son—the son kisses his mother; (Loth is the mother to part—yet not a word does she speak to detain him.)
Glory | Metaphysics |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
There was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now; and will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer; when the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; when I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; when I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
What's the meaning of making a fuss of these trivialities, which are mostly unintended? It may also violate our human rights.
There is one in the world who feels for him who is sad a keener pang than he feels for himself; there is one to whom reflected joy is better than that which comes direct; there is one who rejoices in another's honor, more than in any which is one's own; there is one on whom another's transcendent excellence sheds no beam but that of delight; there is one who hides another's infirmities more faithfully than one's own; there is one who loses all sense of self in the sentiment of kindness, tenderness, and devotion to another; that one is woman.
Imagination | Nothing | World | Think |
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burthened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where!
Day |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Abstract | Body | Children | Dawn | Day | Fidelity | Hope | Insult | Love | Soul | Thinking | Time | Will | World | Insult |
At twelve, the disintegration of afternoon began, the return to phantomerei, if not to phantoms. Till then, it had been the other way: one imagined the violet trees but the trees stood green, at twelve, as green as ever they would be. The sky was blue beyond the vaultiest phrase.
In the far south the sun of autumn is passing like Walt Whitman walking along a ruddy shore. He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him, the worlds that were and will be, death and day. Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end. His beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame.
Think |
The chrysanthemums' astringent fragrance comes each year to disguise the clanking mechanism of machine within machine within machine.
Taste |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Bodies which contain a greater proportion of water than is necessary to balance the other elements, are speedily corrupted, and lose their virtues and properties.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Dear Felix, I have found some work for you. First of all we must have an eye-to-eye monologue and get things settled.
Altercation | Happiness | Old |