This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He registered a dizzy 7.6 mmv over Brodmann 32, the area of abstractive activity. Since that time I have learned that a reading over 6 generally means that a person has so abstracted himself from himself and from the world around him, seeing things as theories and himself as a shadow, that he cannot, so to speak, reenter the lovely ordinary world. Such a person, and there are millions, is destined to haunt the human condition like the Flying Dutchman.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power.
Defeat | Government | Government |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating, or conditional allies)—is that not ridiculous in the extreme?”
Equality | Family | Ideas | Principles | Struggle | Weapons | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as? I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of categories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.
Character | Conscience | Emotions | Family | History | Individual | Magic | Mind | Work | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
My God died young. Theolatry I found degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God; but was I free?
Family |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
Family |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Commonsense has trampled down many a gentle genius whose eyes had delighted in a too early moonbeam of some too early truth; commonsense has back-kicked dirt at the loveliest of queer paintings because a blue tree seemed madness to it's well-meaning hoof; commonsense has prompted ugly but strong nations to crush their fair but frail neighbors the moment a gap in history offered a chance that it would have been ridiculous not to exploit.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is L. The suffix -ita has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy L and a long o. No, the first syllable should be as in lollipop, the L liquid and delicate, the lee not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in Dolores. My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname Haze, where Irish mists blend with a German bunny—I mean, a small German hare.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
What moment in that gradual decay does resurrection choose? What year? Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape? Are some less lucky, or do all escape? A syllogism; other men die but I am not another: therefore I'll not die.
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.
Orderliness - One doesn't have to begin to learn how to be silent, but one has to begin with learning to function in an orderly, clear, unconfused way. Every cerebral movement has to be clear, precise and accurate. Accuracy, precision, is the breath of orderliness. So I learn to be precise and accurate. And in learning to be precise and accurate I learn to be totally present with everything that I do.
Bravery | Faith | Family | Fear | Man | Religion | Understanding |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
The quality of each man's life is the full measure of that man's personal commitment to excellence and to victory.
Family | Life | Life | Philosophy |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part.