This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If you tell the truth about yourself, you can hardly tell the other people.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Since our appearances, that part of us which appears, are so fleeting compared to the other, the unseen part of us, stretching away, means that the unseen can survive, be recovered somehow attached to a person or another , or even haunting certain places after death.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes. - The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives - all bear secret relations to our destinies.
Abuse | Destiny | Ends | Example | Family | Future | Glory | Humility | Nothing | Search | Silence | Thought | Following | Old | Thought |
It is not enough for us to prostrate ourselves under the tree which is Creation, and to contemplate its tremendous branches filled with stars. We have a duty to perform, to work upon the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to worship the incomprehensible while rejecting the absurd; to accept, in the inexplicable, only what is necessary; to dispel the superstitions that surround religion --to rid God of His Maggots.
Silence |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.
If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The preservation of life seems to be rather a slogan than a genuine goal of the anti-abortion forces; what they want is control. Control over behavior: power over women. Women in the anti-choice movement want to share in male power over women, and do so by denying their own womanhood, their own rights and responsibilities.
Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden
I don't think I'll ever fully get over losing the city council seat. I don't know how that happened. But it
Hypocrisy | People | Reflection | Silence | Poem |
Another lean unwashed artificer cuts off his tale and talks of Arthur's death. The Life and Death of King John (Hubert at IV, ii)
Done to death by slanderous tongue was the Hero that here lies. Much Ado about Nothing. Act v. Sc. 3.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken, is a science or complement of sciences exclusively occupied with mind.
Meditation | People |
Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.
Caution | Conversation | God | Good | Light | Means | Meditation | Nothing | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Will | Wills | God |