This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.
His frown was full of terror, and his voice shook the delinquent with such fits of awe as left him not, till penitence had won lost favor back again, and clos'd the breach.
Wonder |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
I would love to see Mr. (Henry) Ford in there, really. I don't know who started the idea that a President must be a Politician instead of a Business man. A Politician can't run any other kind of business. So there is no reason why he can run the U.S. That's the biggest single business in the World.
Cowardice | Generosity | Wonder |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?
Wonder |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its somber wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Sometimes, I ventured, it doesn't occur to boys that their mother was ever young and pretty. . . I couldn't stand it if you boys were inconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who looked after you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and I know there's nobody like her.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
That [haunting fear of being wrong] is the fate of those who break without knowing clearly that Communism is wrong because something else is right, because to the challenge: God or Man?, they continue to give the answer: Man… They are witnesses against something; they have ceased to be witnesses for anything.
Awe | Important | Life | Life | Light | Men | Reverence | Wonder | World |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven.
Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
O stand, stand at the window as the tears scald and start; you shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
[Middleton] contended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had admitted, eulogized, and habitually acted upon principles that were diametrically opposed, not simply to the aspirations of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most common honesty. He showed that they had applauded falsehood, that they had practiced the most wholesale forgery, that they had habitually and grossly falsified history, that they had adopted to the fullest extent the system of pious frauds, and that they continually employed them to stimulate the devotion of the people.
Battle | Heart | Life | Life | Little | Paradox | Will | Wonder |