This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it. As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.
Age | Awakening | Conquest | Duty | Glory | History | Nothing | Object | Reason | War | Wealth | World |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Yes, I am my brotherÂ’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.
It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.
In short, a private education seems the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education for making a man of business. The first would furnish out a good subject for PlatoÂ’s republic, the latter a member for a community overrun with artifice and corruption.
Education | Means | Men | Nothing | Order | Reason | Service | Temper | Think |
The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
Anger |
Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.
Reason |
We are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavor to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behavior to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes.
Human nature | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |
Happy the man who from the sea escapes the storm and finds harbor.
His tawny beard was thÂ’ equal grace both of his wisdom and his face; in cut and dye so like a tile, a sudden view it would beguile; the upper part thereof was whey, the nether, orange mixt with gray.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Life is like the big wheel at Luna Park. You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all around, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh too. It's great fun. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There's generally someone in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he's paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he's allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it; I'm not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others, like Margot, who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that. But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone. People don't see that when they say life they mean two different things. They can mean simply existence, with its physiological implications of growth and organic change. They can't escape that - even by death, but because that's inevitable they think the other idea of life is too - the scrambling and excitement and bumps and the effort to get to the middle, and when we do get to the middle, it's just as if we never started. It's so odd. Now you're a person who was clearly meant to stay in the seats and sit still and if you get bored watch the others. Somehow you got on to the wheel, and you got thrown off again at once with a hard bump. It's all right for Margot, who can cling on, and for me, at the centre, but you're static. Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic. There's a real distinction there, though I can't tell you how it comes. I think we're probably two quite different species spiritually.
Ugly |
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. I come to seek God because I need Him, may be an adequate formula for prayer. I come to adore His splendor, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet, is the only possible formula for worship.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
At the door of the dining-room he left us. 'Good night, Mr Jorkins,' he said. 'I hope you will pay us another visit when you next cross the herring pond.' 'I say, what did your governor mean by that? He seemed almost to think I was American.' 'He's rather odd at times.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.