This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I put the words down and push them a bit.
Experience | Time | Parting |
Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie
Music is about communication... it isn't just something that maybe physically sounds good or orally sounds interesting; it's something far, far deeper than that.
Contrast | Experience |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
Blessings | Experience |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Song in the Manner of Housman: O woe, woe, people are born and die, we also shall be dead pretty soon therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree but he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera...
Tragedy |
Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.
Experience | Religion | Spirit | Afraid |
Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories. The thinkers and investigators of the world are pledged to no special theory, but feel themselves free to search for the greater truth beyond the utmost limits of present knowledge. So likewise in the field of moral truth, it is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient. There are two purposes then which we have in view: To secure in the moral and religious life perfect intellectual liberty, and at the same time to secure concert in action. There shall be no shackles upon the mind, no fetters imposed in early youth which the growing man or woman may feel prevented from shaking off, no barrier set up which daring thought may not transcend. And on the other hand there shall be unity of effort, the unity that comes of an end supremely prized and loved, the unity of earnest, morally aspiring persons, engaged in the conflict with moral evil.
Aid | Cause | Culture | Evolution | Experience | Faith | Force | Humanity | Life | Life | Mankind | Morality | Nature | Optimism | Past | Peace | Pessimism | Power | Will |
Poor men do penance for rich men's sins.
Experience | Openness | People | Personality | Safe |
The eye of the master fattens the horse.
Experience | Life | Life | Principles | Psychology | Time | Youth | Youth |
Never judge by appearances; Judge not a man and things at first sight.
Control | Experience |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep.
Abuse | Experience | Life | Life | Little | Means | Men | Problems | Suicide | Trust | Work | World | Learn |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island...No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it.
Earth | Experience | Need | Revolution | Sacred | Will | Value |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out.
Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.
Experience | Speculation | World |
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness - when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be.
Experience | Fear | Illusion | World |