This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writerÂ’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a manÂ’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
Change | Day | Good | Knowing | Light | Luck | Story | Luck |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Tonight, sent by the police, they come to serenade me. He laughed, then tapped his stomach.-I cannot laugh yet. As musicians they are fatal.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The bigger the country, the greater is the need for internal "structure" and for a decentralized approach to development. If this need is neglected, there is no hope for the poor.
Battle | Experience | Force | Man | Nature |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
Day | Revolution | Spirit |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge of nature.
Circumstances | Day | Evolution | History | Ignorance | Important | Man | Phenomena |
After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?
Day | Evolution | Important | Man | People | Phenomena | Science | Truths |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Technology which enables us to control the nature remember that the revolution is important that each of us individually is important, above all else, be able always a sense of injustice suffered by any person whatever the size of this injustice and whatever the place This man this is the most beautiful characterized by revolutionary goodbye forever, O my children, although I still hope to see you again to all of you a great big kiss and a large bosom large Papa.
World |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
All the common phenomena of Morphology and Physiology, of Chorology and Œkology, of Ontology and Paleontology, can be explained by the theory of descent, and referred to simple mechanical causes. It is precisely in this, viz., that the primary simple causes of all these complex aggregates of phenomena are common to them all, and that other mechanical causes for them are unthinkable—it is in this that, to us, the guarantee of their certainty consists.
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see human beings liberated from their alienation.
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Every person has the truth in his heart. No matter how complicated his circumstances, no matter how others look at him from the outside, and no matter how deep or shallow the truth dwells in his heart, once his heart is pieced with a crystal needle, the truth will gush forth like a geyser.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Needless to say, wealth, education, research and many other things are needed for any civilization, but what is most needed today is a revision of the ends which these means are meant to serve.
The child is vibrationally receiving your fears, your beliefs, even without your spoken word. If you want to do that which is of greatest value for your child, give thought only to that which you want, and your child will receive only those wanted thoughts.
Day | Reason | Thinking | Thought | Child | Parent | Thought |