This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly his character appear in spite of him.
Character | Literature | Man | Music | Work |
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
Anyone who is thoroughly familiar with the language and literature of a people cannot be wholly its enemy.
Enemy | Language | Literature | People | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.
Books | Ideas | Literature | Preference | Science | Wisdom | Old |
A man's work whether in music, painting or literature is always a portrait of himself.
Literature | Man | Music | Wisdom | Work |
E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster
What is so wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.
Birth | Impulse | Literature | Man | Wisdom |
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation; the two keep pace in their downward tendency.
Literature | Wisdom |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
A single mind can acquire a fair knowledge of the whole field of science, and find plenty of time to spare for ordinary human affairs. Not many people take the trouble to do so. But without a knowledge of science one cannot understand current events. That is why our modern our modern literature and art are mostly so unreal.
Art | Events | Knowledge | Literature | Mind | People | Plenty | Science | Time | Wisdom | Trouble | Art | Understand |
A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.
Day | Knowledge | Literature | People | Wisdom |
Philip G. Hamerton, fully Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science or literature or art. It is by; these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is perpetuated from age to age.
Age | Art | Literature | Men | Public | Science | Sound | Thinking | Tradition | Wisdom | Old |
Somewhere among the youth of today are minds capable of discovering ways to world peace, ways to deeper and more fulfilling lives, ways to new appreciations of beauty in art or literature or music, just as there have been minds capable of splitting the atom. Ours is the task of breaking through the thought barrier which keeps our young people from realizing their creative potentiality.
Art | Beauty | Literature | Music | Peace | People | Thought | Wisdom | World | Youth | Youth | Art | Beauty | Thought |
A myth is a collective 'dream' of an entire people at a certain point in their history... But a myth not only lives in literature and imagination, it immediately finds its way into the behavior and attitudes of the culture - into the practical daily lives of the people.
Behavior | Culture | History | Imagination | Literature | Myth | People | Wisdom |
When writing is good, everything is symbolic, but symbolic writing is seldom good.