This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
See, your guests approach. Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, and let's be red with mirth.
He who prates of human nature's baseness and deceit looks in the mirror of his heart, and sees his kind therein reflected.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
It was not death, for I stood up, and all the dead lie down; it was not night, for all the bells put out their tongues, for noon. It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl, nor fire, for just my marble feet could keep a chancel cool. And yet it tasted like them all; the figures I have seen set orderly, for burial, reminded me of mine, as if my life were shaven and fitted to a frame, and could not breathe without a key; and I was like midnight, some, when everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. But most like chaos,--stopless, cool, without a chance or spar,-- or even a report of land to justify despair.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
'And then you would like me as well as your father?' observed he more cheerfully. 'But papa says you would love me better than him, and all the world, if you were my wife-so I'd rather you were that!' 'No! I should never love anybody better than papa,' she returned gravely. 'And people hate their wives, sometimes; but not their sisters and brothers, and if you were the latter, you would live with us, and papa would be as fond of you, as he is of me.
Prayer |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I ran to the children's room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never laid down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed, and listened. I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.
Rest |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
She seemed almost over fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister she showed plenty of affection. They were both very attentive to her comfort, certainly. It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.
Neither earth nor ocean produces a creature as savage and monstrous as woman.
Mind |
Books, said St. Augustine after his conversion, could not teach me charity. We still keep on thinking they can. We do not realize... the utter distinctness of God and the things of God. Psychology of religion cannot teach us prayer, and ethics cannot teach us loveÂ… Team games are compulsory in the school of Divine Love -- there is no getting into a corner with a nice, spiritual book.
God | Little | Preference | God |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
Heart |