This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm.
God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humbleÂ… We can choose to humble ourselves by conquering enmity toward our brothers and sisters, esteeming them as ourselves, and lifting them as high or higher than we areÂ… We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisementÂ… by forgiving those who have offended usÂ… by rendering selfless serviceÂ… by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble othersÂ… by getting to the temple more frequently, [and] by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God... We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, adjusting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives.
'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.
Desire | History | People | Understanding | Friends |
The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth.
Few enjoy noisy overcrowded functions. But they are a gesture of goodwill on the part of host or hostess, and also on the part of guests who submit to them.
Worth |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
And we have friends and no butlers.
In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.
Wrong |
I envision a style: a style That Would Be beautiful, that 'Will someone invent someday, ten years or ten centuries from now, One That Would Be as rhythmic verse, as the precise language of the sciences, undulant, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame: a style That Would pierce your idea like a dagger, and your All which we thought Would Easily sail ahead over a smooth surface like a skiff before a good tail wind.
She fancied she saw him opposite at his window; then all grew confused: clouds passed before her, it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz beneath the light of the lustres on the arm of the Vicomte, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all this time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand caught in a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which invaded her soul.
Fame |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.
Individual | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In the superman Nietzsche gave the world the conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. Remained there but still a problem and it was this: When the Superman Appears at last on earth, what then? Will there be another super superman to follow and another super-superman after that? In the end, man will become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline after eating, with long return down the line, down through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space?
The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Body |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Television | Wrong |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.