This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Eternity | Hypothesis | Reason | Understand |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The United States is speaking out of both sides of its mouth,
Reason |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The passions are the winds that fill the sails of the vessel. - They sink it at times; but without them it would be impossible to make way. - Many things that are dangerous here below, are still necessary.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Indigo with terra sienna, Prussian blue with burnt sienna, really give much deeper tones than pure black itself. When I hear people say ‘there is no black in nature’, I sometimes think, ‘There is no real black in colors either’. However, you must beware of falling into the error of thinking that the colorists do not use black, for of course as soon as an element of blue, red, or yellow is mixed with black, it becomes a gray, namely, a dark, reddish, yellowish, or bluish gray.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing.
Good | Life | Life | Light | Love | People | Pity | Reason | Sentiment | Society | Sympathy | Society |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally, as if she belonged to neither; and indeed, for the time being she seemed to vacillate; she was man; she was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in. The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her. She was a feather blown on the gale. Thus it is no great wonder if, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged….
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said.
Caution | Complacency | Determination | Man | Men | People | Reason | Old |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers ... Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft in the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them.
Beauty | Children | Force | Life | Life | Light | People | Spirit | Thinking | Thought | Woman | World | Worship | Beauty | Old | Thought |