This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realizing them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centered on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions, distracted by ambitions, passions, wants and worries, beset by a sense of our own rights and importance, or anxieties for our own future, or longings for our own success, we need not expect that our spiritual life will be a contrast to all this. The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction - not merely the idea - that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
It is a curious thing ... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
People |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. And that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.
Need |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of foodÂ… of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of bunsÂ… He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foodsÂ… endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavor with flavor from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of brandy.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Perhaps all our lovers are merely hints and symbols; vagabond languages scrawled on gate-posts and paving stones along the weary road that others have trampled before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond each other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.
Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money. [Attributed but disavowed by Dirksen]
Crime | Evidence | Innocence | Need | Understand |
He goes because he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail: knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life.
People |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.
Events |
Anyone can lead a prayer-life -- that is, the sort of reasonable devotional life to which each is called by God. This only involves making a suitable rule and making up your mind to keep it however boring this may be.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behavior.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I've always had two principles throughout all my life in motion-pictures: never do before the camera what you would not do at home and never do at home what you would not do before the camera.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches.
Appearance | Men | Terror |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I can quite understand that many people may be depressed by the spectacle of naked humanity. Personally I cannot see that an ugly body is any more offensive than an ugly dress.
Men | People | Understand |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance.
Absurd | Distinction | Effort | Excitement | Growth | Ideas | Inevitable | Life | Life | Men | Organic | People | Right | Think |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
There is no ordinary run of mankind, there are only individuals who are totally different. And whether a man is naked and black and stands on one foot in Sudan or is clothed in some kind of costume in a bus in England, they are still individuals of entirely different characters.
Need |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Your colleague, Captain Grimes, has been convicted before me on evidence that leaves no possibility of his innocence - of a crime (I might almost call it a course of action) which I can neither understand nor excuse. I dare say I need not particularize.
A simple rule, to be followed whether one is in the light or not, gives backbone to one's spiritual life, as nothing else can.