This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
Thus all things are doomed to change for the worse and retrograde.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
The next time you feel pushed around by life, ask who is the pusher and who is the pushed?
Need |
He looked like a caryatid on vacation; he was supporting nothing but his daydreams.
The habit of reading... produces dignity of manners... custom... is more despotic than law.
Guilty |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau… When we arrived the first important news that we heard from older prisoners was that this comparatively small camp… had no 'oven,' no crematorium, no gas!... This joyful surprise put us all in a good mood... We laughed and cracked jokes in spite of, and during, all we had to go through in the next few hours.
Change | Discovery | Indispensable | Meaning | Suffering | Discovery |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
Need | Superiority |
That earth which formerly was water upon the ocean (of space), which the wise (seers) found out by their skillful devices; whose heart is in the highest heaven, immortal, surrounded by truth, shall bestow upon us brilliancy and strength, (and place us) in supreme sovereignty.
Thy easterly regions, and thy northern, thy southerly (regions), O earth, and thy western, shall be kind to me as I walk (upon thee). May I that have been placed into the world not fall down.
Herbs (medicines),while descending down from heaven to earth proclaimed those who eat us, are never destroyed.
We have all around us, in the atmosphere, the music emanating from all the Broadcasting Stations of the World, but they do not assail your ear at any time. You are not aware of any Station; but, if you have a receiver and if you tune it to the correct wavelength, you can hear the matter broadcast from any Station; if you fail to tune it correctly, you will get instead of news only nuisance.
When as a swan he rises from the water he does not withdraw his one foot. If in truth he were to withdraw it, there would be neither to-day, nor to-morrow, no night and no day, never would the dawn appear.
The plants whose father was the sky, whose mother the earth, Whose root the (heavenly) ocean--may those divine herbs aid thee in obtaining a son.
Superiority | Loss |
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
I, the driver of this car, that used to be Jim Ross, the teamster, and J.A. Ross and Co., general merchandise at Queen Centre, California, am now J. Arnold Ross, oil operator, and my breakfast is about digested, and I am a little too warm in my big new overcoat because the sun is coming out, and I have a new well flowing four thousand barrels at Los Lobos river, and sixteen on the pump at Antelope, and I'm on my way to sign a lease at Beach City, and we'll make up our schedule in the next couple of hours, and 'Bunny' is sitting beside me, and he is well and strong, and is going to own everything I am making, and follow in my footsteps, except that he will never make the ugly blunders or have painful memories that I have, but will be wise and perfect and do everything I say.
Family | Grief | Life | Life | Little | Pain | Story | Tears | Time |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The unknown, said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. Nor do we have much else. We are sharers, not owners. We are not prosperous. None of us is rich. None of us is powerful. If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
Pain |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The tricks of illusion came to him so easily that it seemed he had been born knowing them and needed only to be reminded.
Pain |