This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
Giving | Habit | Language | Personality | Power |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
To me many of my colleagues at Time, basically kind and intensely well-meaning people, seemed to me as charming and as removed from reality as fish in a fish bowl. To me they seemed to know little about the forces that were shaping the history of our time. To me they seemed like little children, knowing and clever little children, but knowing and clever chiefly about trifling things while they were extremely resistant to finding out about anything else.
Belief | Delusion | Habit | Mind | Openness | Peace | People | Price | War | World |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, he turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, now I will you to be a bold swimmer,to jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.
It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul, which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
Administration | Government | Habit | Office | Opposition | Power | Stupidity | Government |
The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Charlie and I believe that those entrusted with handling the funds of others should establish performance goals at the onset of their stewardship. Lacking such standards, managements are tempted to shoot the arrow of performance and then paint the bull's-eye around wherever it lands. In Berkshire's case, we long ago told you that our job is to increase per-share intrinsic value at a rate greater than the increase (including dividends) of the S&P 500. In some years we succeed; in others we fail. But, if we are unable over time to reach that goal, we have done nothing for our investors, who by themselves could have realized an equal or better result by owning an index fund.
The Earth is what we all have in common.
Experience | Habit | Knowledge | Little |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Slowly we are learning, we at least know this much, that we have to unlearn much that we were taught, and are growing chary of emphatic dogmas; Love like Matter is much odder than we thought.
W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone
Work now becomes fun. You are motivated to pay the price. You budget your time and money. You study, think, and plan. The more you think about your goals, the more enthusiastic you become. And with enthusiasm your desire turns into a burning desire.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Making every allowance for the errors of the most extreme fallibility, the history of Catholicism would on this hypothesis represent an amount of imposture probably unequaled in the annals of the human race.
Attention | Contradiction | Dignity | Discovery | Habit | Innovation | Knowledge | Lord | Man | Mind | Reputation | Science | Society | Study | System | Terror | Theology | Thought | Time | Society | Discovery | Thought |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
The first duty of a teacher is not to talk but to listen; to try to understand the direction the energies of each pupil are taking and not to expect activity in places that Energy has yet to reach.
Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
The dusk is heavy with the wine's warm load; here the long sense of classic measure cures the spirit weary of its difficult pain; here the old Bacchic piety endures, Here the sweet legends of the world remain.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death we're a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then not in dreams but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and it's castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
Consciousness | Habit | Love | Space | Thinking |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?
Design | Example | Habit | Impossibility | Reading | Search | War |