This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The first is ape drunk, and he leaps and sings and hollers and danceth to the heavens. The second is lion drunk, and he flings the pots about the house, calls his hostess whore, breaks the glass windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him. The third is swine drunk - heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a little more drink and a few more clothes. The fourth is sheep drunk, wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word. The fifth is maudlin drunk, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his ale, and kiss you, saying "By God, Captain, I love thee; go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee. I would, if it pleased God, I did not love thee so well as I do"- and then he puts his finger in his eye, and cries.
Old |
Peach Blossom Journey - Fishing boat pursue water love hill spring Both banks peach blossom arrive ancient river crossing Travel look red tree not know far Travel furthest blue stream not see people Mountain mouth stealthy move begin cave profound Mountain open spacious view spin flat land Far see one place accumulate cloud tree Nearby join 1000 homes scattered flower bamboo Firewood person first express Han surname given name Reside person not change Qin clothing clothing Reside person together live Wu Ling source Still from outside outside build field orchard Moon bright pine below room pen quiet Sun through cloud middle chicken dog noisy Surprise hear common visitor contend arrive gather Compete lead back home ask all town At brightness alley alley sweep blossom begin Approach dusk fisher woodman via water return Beginning reason evade earth leave person among Change ask god immortal satisfy not return Gorge inside who know be human affairs World middle far gaze sky cloud hill Not doubt magic place hard hear see Dust heart not exhaust think country country Beyond hole not decide away hill water Leave home eventually plan far travel spread Self say pass through old not lost Who know peak gully now arrive change Now only mark entrance hill deep Blue stream how many times reach cloud forest Spring come all over be peach blossom water Not know immortal source what place search A fisher's boat chased the water into the coveted hills, Both banks were covered in peach blossom at the ancient river crossing. He knew not how far he sailed, gazing at the reddened trees, He travelled to the end of the blue stream, seeing no man on the way. Then finding a crack in the hillside, he squeezed through the deepest of caves, And beyond the mountain a vista opened of flat land all about! In the distance he saw clouds and trees gathered together, Nearby amongst a thousand homes flowers and bamboo were scattered. A wood-gatherer was the first to speak a Han-era name, The inhabitants' dress was unchanged since the time of Qin. The people lived together on uplands above Wu Ling river, Apart from the outside world they laid their fields and plantations. Below the pines and the bright moon, all was quiet in the houses, When the sun started to shine through the clouds, the chickens and dogs gave voice. Startled to find a stranger amongst them, the people jostled around, They competed to invite him in and ask about his home. As brightness came, the lanes had all been swept of blossom, By dusk, along the water the fishers and woodsmen returned. To escape the troubled world they had first left men's society, They live as if become immortals, no reason now to return. In that valley they knew nothing of the way we live outside, From within our world we gaze afar at empty clouds and hills. Who would not doubt that magic place so hard to find, The fisher's worldly heart could not stop thinking of his home. He left that land, but its hills and rivers never left his heart, Eventually he again set out, and planned to journey back. By memory, he passed along the way he'd taken before, Who could know the hills and gullies had now completely changed? Now he faced only the great mountain where he remembered the entrance, Each time he followed the clear stream, he found only cloud and forest. Spring comes, and all again is peach blossom and water, No-one knows how to reach that immortal place.
Song of an Old General - When he was a youth of fifteen or twenty, He chased a wild horse, he caught him and rode him, He shot the white-browed mountain tiger, He defied the yellow-bristled Horseman of Ye. Fighting single- handed for a thousand miles, With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude. ...Granted that the troops of China were as swift as heaven's thunder And that Tartar soldiers perished in pitfalls fanged with iron, General Wei Qing's victory was only a thing of chance. And General Li Guang's thwarted effort was his fate, not his fault. Since this man's retirement he is looking old and worn: Experience of the world has hastened his white hairs. Though once his quick dart never missed the right eye of a bird, Now knotted veins and tendons make his left arm like an osier. He is sometimes at the road-side selling melons from his garden, He is sometimes planting willows round his hermitage. His lonely lane is shut away by a dense grove, His vacant window looks upon the far cold mountains But, if he prayed, the waters would come gushing for his men And never would he wanton his cause away with wine. ...War-clouds are spreading, under the Helan Range; Back and forth, day and night, go feathered messages; In the three River Provinces, the governors call young men -- And five imperial edicts have summoned the old general. So he dusts his iron coat and shines it like snow- Waves his dagger from its jade hilt in a dance of starry steel. He is ready with his strong northern bow to smite the Tartar chieftain -- That never a foreign war-dress may affront the Emperor. ...There once was an aged Prefect, forgotten and far away, Who still could manage triumph with a single stroke.
Angels | Good | Knowing | News | Past | Peace | People | Speech | Time | World | Think |
I asked a thief to steal me a peach: he turned up his eyes. I asked a lithe lady to lie her down: holy and meek, she cries. As soon as I went an angel came. He winked at the thief and smiled at the dame— and without one word said had a peach from the tree, and still as a maid enjoyed the lady.
Government | Men | Government | Trouble |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.
Envy | Existence | Individual | Jealousy | Life | Life | Light | People | Unhappiness |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.
Envy | Existence | Individual | Jealousy | Life | Life | Light | Unhappiness |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
Children | Day | Earth | Light | Men | Miracles | Nothing | Quiet | Space | Old |
As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away. I have no intellectual property, and I think that all claimants to such property are thieves.
Sure enough, moving, the thunder became men, ten thousand, men hewn and tumbling, mobs of ten thousand, clashing together, this way and that.
The human every is a solitude in which we compose these propositions, torn by dreams,
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
If then, at this great distance, our human vision can discern that sight, why, pray, are we to think that the divine splendor of the stars can be cast into darkness?
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other's salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me - and there are thousands like me - you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If you exclude certain bodily appendages, the only instrument I've ever been able to play at all well is the typewriter.
In Prison Wearily, drearily, Half the day long, Flap the great banners High over the stone Strangely and eerily Sounds the wind's song, Bending the banner-poles. While, all alone, watching the loophole's spark, Lie I, with life all dark, Feet tethered, hands fettered Fast to the stone, The grim walls, square lettered With prisoned men's groan. Still strain the banner-poles through the wind's song, westward the banner rolls over my wrong.
Golden Rule | Nothing | Rule | Will | Golden Rule |