This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
In the development and the maintenance of a living organism the coordination is very clear. The development of each part can be shown to be dependent on that of other parts, including the immediate environment; and the more closely development and maintenance are studied the more evident does this become. But the particular manner in which the parts and the environment influence one another is such that the specific structure and activities of the organism are maintained. They are unmistakably developed and maintained as a whole, and this is what we mean when we say that the organism lives a specific life. The conception of its life enables us to predict the general behavior of its parts so long as it is alive, and in particular it enables us to predict the general manner of its reproduction from a rudimentary part of the same organism? it is this co-ordinated maintenance that we call life.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilizations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.
Man |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.
J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.
Nature | Technology | Time |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots. Good morning! said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. What do you mean? he said. Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I wish it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on? All of them at once, said Bilbo. And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill.
With art and knavery we live through half the year; with knavery and art we live through the other.
Generosity | Selfishness | Time | Unkindness |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And in the darkness bind them.
Conversation | Man | Ugly | Will |