This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid — but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.
Children | Cooperation | Earth | Fun | Nature | Technology | World | Govern | Learn |
A nun of winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them. As You Like It (Celia at III, iv)
Nature |
Against my soul's pure truth why labour you to make it wander in an unknown field?
A murderer and a villain, A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings, A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket-- Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at III, iv)
A little gale will soon disperse that cloud and blow it to the source from whence it came. Thy very beams will dry those vapors up, for every cloud engenders not a storm. King Henry VI, Part III, Act v, Scene 3
Little |
Ay, every inch a king: when I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life. — What was thy cause? — Adultery? — Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: the wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers. — Behold yond simpering dame, whose face between her forks presages snow; that minces virtue, and does shake the head to hear of pleasure's name; — the fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption! — fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee. King Lear, Act iv, Scene 6
Fear | Life | Life | Nature | Paradise | Spirit | Thought | Thought |
All the argument is a whore and a cuckold, a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon!
Nature |
Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, you do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex: we cannot fight for love, as men ay do; we should be woo'd, and were not made to woo. I'll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii, Scene 1
Nature |
As Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece, And Peter Turph and Henry Pimpernell, And twenty more such names and men as these Which never were, nor no man ever saw. The Taming of the Shrew. Induc. Sc. 2.
Love |
As she in beauty, education, blood, Holds hand with any princess of the world. The Life and Death of King John, Act ii, Scene 1
And why not death, rather than living torment? To die is to be banish'd from myself; and Silvia is myself: banish'd from her, is self from self: a deadly banishment! What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by, and feed upon the shadow of perfection. Except I be by Silvia in the night, there is no music in the nightingale; unless I look on Silvia in the day, there is no day for me to look upon; she is my essence; and I leave to be, if I be not by her fair influence foster'd, illumined, cherish'd, kept alive. I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom: tarry I here, I but attend on death; but, fly I hence, I fly away from life. Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii, Scene 1
Bounty, being free itself, thinks all others so.
Happy | Intemperance | Nature |
But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry in what I further shall intend to do, by heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint and strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs: the time and my intents are savage-wild, more fierce and more inexorable far than empty tigers or the roaring sea. Romeo and Juliet, Act v, Scene 3
Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,— I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw. King Henry VI. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.