This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored." - Saki, pen name for Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro NULL
"The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money." - Samuel Butler
"All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton
"The airplane turned into a great tool for scouting real estate. From up in the air we could check out traffic flows, see which way cities and towns were growing, and evaluate the location of the competition – if there was any. Then we would develop our real estate strategy for that market." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton
"The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them." - Samuel Pepys
"The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him." - Samuel Smiles
"All giving is asking, and all asking is an asking for love." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"On each fresh occasion of combat, when the enemy desires to challenge me, I conduct myself valiantly: knowing that to fight a duel is an unworthy act, I turn my back upon the adversary without ever looking him in the face; then I run to my Jesus and tell Him I am ready to shed every drop of blood in testimony of my belief that there is a Heaven, I tell Him I am glad to be unable to contemplate, while on earth, with the eyes of the soul, the beautiful Heaven that awaits me so He will deign to open it for eternity to poor unbelievers." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
"Time is but a shadow, a dream; already God sees us in glory and takes joy in our eternal beatitude. How this thought helps my soul! I understand then why He lets us suffer..." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
"People happy in love have an air of intensity" - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference." - Stephan Jay Gould
"I want to argue that the ‘sudden’ appearance of species in the fossil record and our failure to note subsequent evolutionary change within them is the proper prediction of evolutionary theory as we understand it. Evolution usually proceeds by ‘speciation’—the splitting of one lineage from a parental stock—not by the slow and steady transformation of these large parental stocks. Repeated episodes of speciation produce a bush. Evolutionary ‘sequences’ are not rungs on a ladder, but our retrospective reconstruction of a circuitous path running like a labyrinth, branch to branch, from the base of the bush to a lineage now surviving at its top. How does speciation occur? This is a perennial hot topic in evolutionary theory, but most biologist would subscribe to the ‘allopatric theory’ (the debate centers on the admissibility of other modes; nearly everyone agrees that allopatric speciation is the most common mode). Allopatric means ‘in another place.’ In the allopatric theory, popularized by Ernst Mayr, new species arise in in very small populations that become isolated from their parental group at the periphery of the ancestral range. Speciation in these small isolates is very rapid by evolutionary standards—hundreds or thousands of years (a geological microsecond). Major evolutionary change may occur in these small isolated populations. Favorable genetic variation can quickly spread through them. Moreover, natural selection tends to be intense in geographically marginal areas where the species barely maintains a foothold. In large central populations, on the other hand, favorable variations spread very slowly, and most change is steadfastly resisted by the well-adapted population. Small changes occur to meet the requirements of slowly altering climates, but major genetic reorganizations almost always take place in the small, peripherally isolated populations that form new species." - Stephan Jay Gould
"A liberal is a person who believes that water can be made to run uphill. A conservative is someone who believes everybody should pay for his water. I'm somewhere in between: I believe water should be free, but that water flows downhill." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White
"Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force: on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older civilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity to-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surface; the immense increase in the multitudinous variety of its activities; the immense increase in the velocity of the world movement—are all these to mean merely that the crash will be all the more complete and terrible when it comes? We can not be certain that the answer will be in the negative; but of this we can be certain, that we shall not go down in ruin unless we deserve and earn our end. There is no necessity for us to fall; we can hew out our destiny for ourselves, if only we have the wit and the courage and the honesty." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"The Officious man is one who will rise and promise things beyond his power; and who, when an arrangement is admitted to be just, will oppose it, and be refuted." - Theophrastus NULL
"Be aware of the contact between your feet and the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. We have caused a lot of damage to the Earth. Now it is time for us to take good care of her. We bring our peace and calm to the surface of the Earth and share the lesson of love. We walk in that spirit." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"If we believe that tomorrow will be better we can bear a hardship today." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"Sin so bowed the hearts and minds of men, that they became crooked in respect of the holy law; and God justly so bowed their lot, that it became crooked too. And this crook in our lot inseparably follows our sinful condition, till dropping this body of sin and death, we get within heaven's gates." - Thomas Boston
"I did not will a grave should end thy pilgrimage today, but I, too, am a slave!" - Thomas Hardy
"There isn’t such a reasonable fellow in the world, to hear him talk. He Tom Brown never wants anything but what’s right and fair; only when you come to settle what’s right and fair, its everything he wants, and nothing that you want. And that’s his idea of a compromise." - Thomas Hughes
"Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected – these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us." - Thomas Jefferson
"I have always said, I always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands." - Thomas Jefferson
"I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time." - Thomas Jefferson
"Put down all banks, admit none but a metallic circulation that will take its proper level with the like circulation in other countries, and then our manufacturers may work in fair competition with those of other countries, and the import duties which the government may lay for the purposes of revenue will so far place them above equal competition." - Thomas Jefferson
"The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government." - Thomas Jefferson
"An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"Richard Wagner once declared that civilization disappears before music like mist before the sun. He never dreamed that one day, for its part, music would disappear before civilization, before democracy, like mist before the sun." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death." - Thomas Paine
"For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king and there ought to be no other." - Thomas Paine
"His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground." - Thomas Paine
"Songs of Innocence (Introduction) - Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped; he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer:’ So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. ‘Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read.’ So he vanish’d from my sight, And I pluck’d a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear." - William Blake
"The Holiness of Minute Particulars - And many conversèd on these things as they labour’d at the furrow, Saying: ‘It is better to prevent misery than to release from misery; It is better to prevent error than to forgive the criminal. Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones; And those who are in misery cannot remain so long, If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth.… He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars, And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power: The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity. Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually, On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!" - William Blake
"It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me, I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed." - William Collins
"Women are in this respect more fortunate than men, that most of their employments are of such a nature that they can at the same time be thinking of quite different things." - Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
"When you say No to a Woman, Sir, always say it in one word. If you give her reasons, she invariably believes that you mean Yes." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
"Legalize racing in every State. Sure people will bet, but they get to see the horses run and you certain can't see General Motors and General Electric and General Utility run when you bet on them." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"So much money is being spent on the campaigns that I doubt if either man, as good as they are, are worth what it will cost to elect them." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Two things that tickle the fancy of our citizens, one is let them act on a committee, and the other is to promise to let him walk in a parade. What America needs is more mileage out of our parades." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"The fear of capitalism compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality." - Will and Ariel Durant
"Her eye, her ear, were tuning forks, burning glasses, which caught the minutest refraction or echo of a thought or feeling... She heard a deeper vibration, a kind of composite echo, of all that the writer said, and did not say." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn't want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"There was a new kind of strength in the gravity of her face, and her colors still gave her that look of deep-seated health and ardor." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"Lysenko was an aberrant power-hungry nut in a context that brought him to power. Nevertheless, he existed within a philosophical frame we need. For example, the Lysenkoists emphasized traditional, cultural, peasant intelligence as important for agriculture. They made such a fetish of this emphasis that they carried it too far, ultimately suppressing the scientific view held by Vavilov. In our country among our scientists today, it is the other way around, except for the miniature low input sustainable agriculture (LISA) effort and the acknowledged need to develop on-farm research. One could, of course, go overboard in the direction of tradition only. I see it as I travel to various sustainable agriculture gatherings. It is actually a rumble that makes me uneasy. The noise is often from a hard put-down of modern science. When I listen to such put-downs, I remember that in the USSR overemphasis on tradition and cultural wisdom shoved out some good Western science." - Wes Jackson