This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.
Church | Desire | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nothing | Passion | Truth | Think |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?
Better | Civilization | Progress | Time | World |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Do not resist or complain or fight. Let truth win. If we no longer value our resistance, something new will break through.
And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream,-- All is here begun, and finished elsewhere.
Church | Impression | Little | Present | Receive | Warning |
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
The cause of all this young man’s crimes was his desire to be well dressed. The first grisette who had said to him, you are handsome, had spattered a stain of darkness into his heart and had made a Cain of this Abel.
Human race | Progress | Race |
Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine; it has its pauses, when it rallies the stragglers, its stopping places when it meditates, contemplating some new and splendid promised land that has suddenly appeared on its horizon. It has its nights of slumber; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker to see the human spirit lost in shadow, and to grope in the darkness without being able to awake sleeping progress.
Darkness | Human race | Journey | Life | Life | Progress | Race |
What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to Saint Paul; and what he calls "grace" from a heavenly point of view, we, from an earthly point, call "rigtheousness."
Some chant in meditation, some practice deep, austere meditation; some worship Him in adoration, some practice daily rituals. Some live the life of a wanderer.
Progress |
Knowledge not only helps us material success but it also enhances our spiritual growth.
Progress |
We should always try to acquire as much knowledge as possible but at the same time we should be careful not to let pseudo-knowledge influence us.
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
A new burst of rage swept over him — What did it matter whether it was true or not — whether anything was true or not? What did it matter if anybody had done all the hideous and loathsome things that everybody else said they had done? It was what everybody was saying! It was what everybody believed — what everybody was interested in! It was the measure of a whole society — their ideals and their standards! It was the way they spent their time, repeating nasty scandals about each other; living in an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism, with endless whispering and leering, and gossip of low intrigue.
The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.
Church |
Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.