This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood—for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.
Books | God | Good | Justice | Man | Simplicity | Woman | World | God |
Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
If minds are truly alive they will seek out books, for books are the human race recounting its memorable experiences, confronting its problems, searching for solutions, drawing the blueprints of it futures."
Books | Human race | Race | Will |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius, and many optimistic writers have been read and admired out of all measure to their talents, simply because they wrote of the sunlit side of life.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and to recall them with satisfaction when we are old.
It is not uncommon in the modern world for people to retreat into the world of books to escape from the realities of the outside world. The printed word evokes the modern notion of security, with the emphasis on detachment, privacy, autonomy, predictability, and enclosed artificiality.
Johann Spurzheim, fully Johann Gaspar Spurzheim or Kaspar or Caspar
Experience demonstrates that of any number of children of equal intellectual powers, those who receive no particular care in infancy, and who do not begin to study till the constitution begins to be consolidated, but who enjoy the benefit of a good physical education, very soon surpass in their studies those who commenced earlier, and who read numerous books when very young.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read.
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
Books | Good | Ideas | Men | Need | Public | Reading | Rights | Security | Wise |
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.
How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we may now expect to see, not only in theory and in books but in actual practice, calculated for the general good, and taking no more upon it than the general good requires, leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with men's notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine.
Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger
Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us. This is the message of old religions and new psychiatries. Unless this message is heard, unless we ... can give up our delicious satisfactions in opportunities for vengeful retaliation on scapegoats, we cannot expect to preserve our peace, our public safety, or our mental health... the punitive attitude persists. And just so long as the spirit of vengeance has the slightest vestige of respectability, so long as it pervades the public mind and infuses its evil upon the statute books of the law, we will make no headway toward the control of crime. We cannot assess the most appropriate and effective penalties so long as we seek to inflict retaliatory pain.
Books | Control | Evil | Mind | Philosophy | Public | Question | Retaliation | Spirit | Vengeance | Will | Old |
Marguerite Yourcenar, pseudonym for Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the Gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and pediments will rise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality.
Books | Confidence | Faith | Future | Indifference | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Men | Order | Peace | Time | Will | Work | World | Think |
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The study of books is a languishing and feeble activity that gives no heat, whereas discussion teaches and exercises us at the same time.
Books | Discussion | Study |
Michael Jackson, fully Michael Joseph Jackson, aka MJ or King of Pop
In the end, the most important thing is to be true to yourself and those you love and work hard. Work like there's no tomorrow. Train. Strive. Really train and cultivate your talent to the highest degree. Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive. Use the tools of your trade, if it's books or a floor to dance on or a body of water to swim in. Whatever it is, it's yours. That's what I've always tried to remember.