This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The stately ship is seen no more, the fragile skiff attains the shore; and while the great and wise decay, and all their trophies pass away, some sudden thought, some careless rhyme, still floats above the wrecks of Time.
Age | Belief | Culture | Existence | Faith | Ideas | Imagination | Legends | Life | Life | Light | Little | Poetry | Religion | System | Time |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Faith always presented to the mind the idea of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised more than this, but it always included this. It was the opposite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent men called credulity, reverent men called faith; and although one word was more respectful than the other, yet the two words were with most men strictly synonymous.
Age | Character | Contemplation | Imagination | Men | Nature | Suffering | Contemplation | Old |
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Age | Art | Beauty | Consciousness | Culture | Elegance | Evidence | Excitement | Failure | Family | Good | Hate | Health | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Past | People | Politics | Recreation | Reward | Science | Self | Talking | Time | Work | World | Failure | Loss | Art | Beauty |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Vast tribes of savages, who had always been idolaters, who were perfectly incapable, from their low state of civilization, of forming any but anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity, or of concentrating their attention steadily on any invisible object, and who for the most part were converted not by individual persuasion but by the commands of their chiefs, embraced Christianity in such multitudes that their habits of mind soon became the dominating habits of the Church. From this time the tendency to idolatry was irresistible. The old images were worshipped under new names, and one of the most prominent aspects of the Apostolical teaching was in practice ignored.
Age | Agony | Disease | Eternal | Happy | Heart | Pride | Purity | Remorse | Shame | Society | World | Society | Think |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
It is quite natural that if a child of limited intelligence can only do one subject, that subject should be arithmetic. The judgments involved in thinking, "Is this the right block? No, that one's too long," and later associating the various blocks with 0, 1, 2, ...., and 9 are much simpler than those required to learn the 26 letters of the alphabet and the eccentricities of English and American spelling.
Age | Aspiration | Efficiency | Life | Life | Need | People | Present | Thinking | Aspiration |
Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
Age | Man | Singularity | Work | Old |
Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
My heart and teach myself to feel only a sober tenderness where once was passion's loveliness.
Age |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
The architect must not only understand drawing, but music.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.
Age | Civilization | Little | Means | Power | Proletariat | Revolution | Will |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Actually, observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained,- Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse.
Age | Circumstances | Virginity |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The sky was so heartless and dark, and her body, her head, and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes -- telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression -- that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution "English language" for "romantic novel" would make this elegant formula more correct.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of eachother's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
Childhood | Duty | Heart | Life | Life | Lust | Melancholy | Mortal | Nothing | Sense | Old |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Do not most of us resemble that old general of ninety who, having come upon some young officers debauching some girls, said to them angrily: Gentlemen, is that the example I give you?
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.