This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.
There is a universal element in man which he can assert by so acting as if the purpose of the Universe were also his purpose. It is the function of the supreme ordeals of life to develop in men this power, to give to their life this distinction, this height of dignity, these vast horizons.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.
In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.
Evil |
Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public.
Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
No Winter lasts forever, no Spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep, and we know it.
Evil |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
Heart |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It?s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
Evil | Man | Pleasure | Understanding |
Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but believing when we neither see, hear nor feel is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith. Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honor God by our faith.
Evil |
Power corrupts... when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. The will to power... far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one.
To be a mother is the greatest vocation in the world. No being has a position of such great power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her is necessarily committed the making of the nation?s citizens.
Evil |
Who troubles others has no rest himself.
Belief | Compassion | Desire | God | Human race | Love | Means | Race | Will | God |
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
It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel.