This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.
Bigotry | Economics | Future | God | Kill | Love | Man | Means | Men | Past | Position | Religion | Will | Worth | God |
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I remember the master, before he fell into a doze, stroking her bonny hair - it pleased him rarely to see her gentle - and saying - 'Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?' And she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, 'Why cannot you always be a good man, father?
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
Someone may object that material things extend beyond the realm of our present perception. It belongs to their very essence to be more than what is intimated or revealed in a continuum of subjective aspects at the moment of perception. They are also there when we do not perceive them: they exist in themselves.
Many people look upon change with dread and foreboding. But for those on the spiritual path—for those who believe in God and the power of prayer—change is a fuller expression of life. When a problem or condition arises in your life that indicates a change, rely upon God, and realize that it is not so much that a door has closed on a chapter of your life, but rather that a door has opened on new and more interesting things.
Freedom | Law | Life | Life | Past | Position | Power | Prosperity | Rights |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
Death in Heidegger is an event of freedom, whereas for me the subject seems to reach the limit of the possible in suffering. It finds itself enchained, overwhelmed, and in some way passive. Death is in this sense the limit of idealism.
Care | Ego | Freedom | Future | Past | Relationship | Solitude |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and can coast down them. ... Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.
Past |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Life had seemed so simple that morning when I had wakened and found the false springÂ…But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Past |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
For de small stealing dey puts you in jail, soon or late. But for de big stealing dey puts yo' picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croaks! If dey's one thing I learned in ten years, listenin' to de white quality on de Pullman cars, it's dat same fact. And when I gets a chance to use it -- from stowaway to Emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
TYRONE: [Stares at him -- impressed.] Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. [Then protesting uneasily] But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND: [Sardonically] The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.
If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. There must be an organic unity between past and future lived in the present.
Experience | Feelings | Heart | Little | Need | Past | People | Will | Work | Value |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself.
Beauty | Dawn | Freedom | Fulfillment | Good | Joy | Life | Life | Lying | Past | Peace | Sound | Unity | Vision | Beauty | Old |