This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The public! The public! How many fools does it require to make the public?
Existence | Man | Nothing | Popularity | Worth |
The hell of these days is the fear of not getting along, especially of not making money.
Heart |
It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanic's institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well-conditioned peasantry, so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety.
If the world is ever conquered for Christ, it will be by every one doing their own work, filling their own sphere, holding their own post, and saying to Jesus, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do.
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!
Good |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
And for its part, what was life? Was it perhaps only an infectious disease of matter—just as the so-called spontaneous generation of matter was perhaps only an illness, a cancerous stimulation of the immaterial?
The true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law, is the intention of the law givers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances, provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this. There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed. This new language of prayer has to come out of something that transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love. Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
Abstract | Enemy | Evil | God | Grace | Justify | Love | Mercy | Nature | Oneness | Reality | Respect | Right | Rights | Understanding | Respect | God |
Am I not arrogant too? Am I not unreasonable, unfair, demanding, suspicious and often quite arbitrary in my dealings with others? The point is not just “who is right” but “judge not” and “forgive one another” and “bear one another’s burdens”. This by no means implies passive obsequiousness and blind obedience, but a willingness to listen, to be patient. This is our task.
Fighting | Good | Idealism | Man | Men | Peace | People | Rest | Society | Will | Work | Society | Learn |
Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this.
Abstract | Enemy | Evil | God | Grace | Justify | Law | Love | Mercy | Nature | Oneness | Principles | Reality | Respect | Right | Rights | Understanding | Respect | God | Intellect |
It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them… Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part.
Error | Circumstance |
Spring Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit In every street these tunes our ears do greet, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo Spring the sweet Spring.
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
There's a regret So grinding, so immitigably sad, Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. ... Do you not know it yet? For deeds undone Rnakle and snarl and hunger for their due, Till there seems naught so despicable as you In all the grin o' the sun. Like an old shoe The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie About the beach of Time, till by and by Death, that derides you too -- Death, as he goes His ragman's round, espies you, where you stray, With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way And then -- and then, who knows But the kind Grave Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, In that black bridewell working out his term, Hanker and grope and crave? "Poor fool that might -- That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, Think of it, here and thus made over to me In the implacable night!" And writhing, fain And like a triumphing lover, he shall take, His fill where no high memory lives to make His obscene victory vain.
Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
Goedel proved that a system of axioms can never be based on itself; in order to prove its validity, statements from outside must be used.
Challenge | Enthusiasm | Ideas | Influence | Present | Sense | Unique |
To everything we call a cause we ascribe power to produce the effect. In intelligent causes, the power may be without being exerted; so I have power to run when I sit still or walk. But in inanimate causes we conceive no power but what is exerted, and therefore measure the power of the cause by the effect which it actually produces. The power of an acid to dissolve iron is measured by what it actually dissolves.