This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mankind did not multiply words without necessity, especially in the beginning: for they were, at no small trouble to invent and to retain them.
Verbs originally expressed the state of things, only in an indeterminate manner. Such are the infinitives, to go, to act. The action accompanying them supplied the rest ; that is, the tenscs4 moods, numbers, and persons. In saying tree to fee, they signified by some gesture, whether they spoka of themselves or of a third person, of one or of many, of the past, present, or future, in fine, whether in a positive or in a conditional sense.
But how much better, in any case, to wonder than not to wonder, to dance with astonishment and go spinning in praise, than not to know enough to dance or praise at all; to be blessed with more imagination than you might know at the given moment what to do with than to be cursed with too little to give you — and other people — any trouble.
Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?
Spirit |
There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations called holiness.
Age | Experience | Future | God | Old age | People | Soul | Spirit | Study | Theology | God | Old |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
With faith and hope and courage we hold our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the march from Capitalism to Socialism, from Slavery to Freedom, from Barbarism to Civilization.
Courage | Hell | History | Labor | Men | Need | Spirit | Struggle | Time | Will | World | Writing |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.
Mind |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
But it wasnÂ’t until I was well into my twenties and had Jewish friends that I heard about guilt.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.
Barbarism | Capitalism | Courage | Faith | Hope | Slavery | Spirit |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'... Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.