This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.
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There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one?s vanity?the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.
Day | Fate | God | Hate | Life | Life | Nothing | Fate | God |
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
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Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
I think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Believing passionately in the palpably not true... is the chief occupation of mankind.
We were Red Romantics, perfectly ridiculous to be sure, but in full bloom. The little good which remains to me comes from that epoch.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which the slow build-up of pressures would have long since resulted in catastrophic explosion.
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Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.
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The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. Yet to turn our backs on the destructive forces of the century is of little avail. The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists' "expansion for expansion's sake," the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie's political device of "power for power's sake," the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening. And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil.
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The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.
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Somewhat influenced by Aristotelian physics, he [Augustine] holds that the end of all movement is rest, and now he understands the emotions - the motions of the soul - in analogy to the movements of the physical world. For ?nothing else do bodies desire by their weight than what souls desire by their love.? Hence, in the Confessions: ?My weight is my love; by it I am borne whithersoever I am born.? The soul?s gravity, the essence of who somebody is, and which as such is inscrutable to human eyes, becomes manifest in this love.
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J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
But it may be the hard part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.
Acceptance | Desire | Men | Parents | Resignation |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
As she passed the doors she turned and looked back. Grave and thoughtful was her glance, as she looked on the king with cool pity in her eyes. Very fair was her face, and her long hair was like a river of gold. Slender and tall she was in her white robe girt with silver; but strong she seemed and stern as steel, a daughter of kings. Thus Aragorn for the first time in the full light of day beheld Eowyn, Lady of Rohan, and thought her fair, fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood. And she now as suddenly aware of him: tall heir of kings, wise with many winters, grey-cloaked, hiding a power that yet she felt. For a moment still as stone she stood, then turning swiftly she was gone.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.