This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.
Evidence | Inconvenient | Love | Means | Will |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I did think of marrying once, and I explained it on ‘The Dick Cavett Show’ in 1968. It was right after those debates with Bill Buckley during the conventions. I told Cavett that I once planned to marry Joanne Woodward. ‘What went wrong?’ Cavett asked. I told him that Joanne met Paul Newman and I met Bill Buckley.
Love | Understand |
I often think of the beautiful Turin, where sweet must feel to live.
In short, a private education seems the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education for making a man of business. The first would furnish out a good subject for PlatoÂ’s republic, the latter a member for a community overrun with artifice and corruption.
Education | Means | Men | Nothing | Order | Reason | Service | Temper | Think |
Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.
Reason |
Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted.
Conversation | Discretion | Giving | Good | Love | Man | Nothing | Sense |
Soon all of you immortals Will be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for? Have you run out of thunderbolts?
But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.
His tawny beard was thÂ’ equal grace both of his wisdom and his face; in cut and dye so like a tile, a sudden view it would beguile; the upper part thereof was whey, the nether, orange mixt with gray.
I sacrifice to no god save myself — And to my belly, greatest of deities.