This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We in the contemporary west may wake up each morning to cast out our sleep and dream experience like so much rubbish. But that is an almost freakish act of alienation. Only western society - and especially in the modern era - has been quite so prodigal in dealing with what is, even by the fictitious measure of our mechanical clocks, a major portion of our lives." - Theodore Roszak
"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
"And yet without labor there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable." - Thomas Carlyle
"An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. Neither the Channel nor the Rhine will arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer." - Thomas Paine
"One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." - Thomas Paine
"To a Desolate Friend - O friend, like some cold wind to-day Your message came, and chilled the light; Your house so dark, and mine so bright,— I could not weep, I could not pray! My wife and I had kissed at morn, My children’s lips were full of song; O friend, it seemed such cruel wrong, My life so full, and yours forlorn! We slept last night clasped hand in hand, Secure and calm—and never knew How fared the lonely hours with you, What time those dying lips you fanned. We dreamed of love, and did not see The shadow pass across our dream; We heard the murmur of a stream, Not death’s for it ran bright and free. And in the dark her gentle soul Passed out, but oh! we knew it not! My babe slept fast within her cot, While yours woke to the slow bell’s toll. She paused a moment,—who can tell?— Before our windows, but we lay So deep in sleep she went away, And only smiled a sad farewell! It would be like her; well we know How oft she waked while others slept— She never woke us when she wept, It would be like her thus to go! Ah, friend! you let her stray too far Within the shadow-haunted wood, Where deep thoughts never understood Breathe on us and like anguish are. One day within that gloom there shone A heavenly dawn, and with wide eyes She saw God’s city crown the skies, Since when she hasted to be gone. Too much you yielded to her grace; Renouncing self, she thus became An angel with a human name, And angels coveted her face. Earth’s door you set so wide, alack She saw God’s gardens, and she went A moment forth to look; she meant No wrong, but oh! she came not back! Dear friend, what can I say or sing, But this, that she is happy there? We will not grudge those gardens fair Where her light feet are wandering. The child at play is ignorant Of tedious hours; the years for you To her are moments: and you too Will join her ere she feels your want. The path she wends we cannot track: And yet some instinct makes us know Hers is the joy, and ours the woe,— We dare not wish her to come back!" - W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson
"How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
"The foundation of empire is art and science remove them or degrade them and the empire is no more — empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose." - William Blake
"The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands." - William Blake
"Quick is the succession of human events: the cares of to-day are seldom the cares of to-morrow; and when we lie down at night, we may safely say to most of our troubles, Ye have done your worst, and we shall meet no more." - William Cowper
"A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state." - Walter Lippmann
"Look for companies with high profit margins." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Spend some time observing babies and vow to emulate their joy." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop. Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"We are going to a new world... and no doubt it is there that everything is for the best; for it must be admitted that one might lament a little over the physical and moral happenings of our own world." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"By indulging this fretful temper you alienate those on whose affection much of your comfort depends." - Hugh Blair
"If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such." - William Godwin
"Being thus saved himself, he may be zealous in the salvation of souls." - William Law
"Mastership hath many shifts whereby it striveth to keep itself alive in the world. And now hear a marvel: whereas thou sayest these two times that out of one man ye may get but one man's work, in days to come one man shall do the work of a hundred men — yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men." - William Morris
"It is harder to hide the feelings we have than to feign the ones we do not have." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Jealously is always born with love but it does not die with it." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"The most dangerous weakness of old people who have been amiable is to forget they are no longer so." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Oh, thou hast a damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked." - William Shakespeare
"What a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously; not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue not by wire pulling and demagoguery not by the arts of popularity not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country." - Elihu Root
"Serve God, love me, and mend." - William Shakespeare
"She pined in thought; And, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief." - William Shakespeare
"Albine now yielded to him, and Serge possessed her." - Emile Zola
"What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd ended up showing off everything she'd got, and she'd puked all down one of the muslin curtains and completely ruined it. At least the men did go into the street to do it; Lorilleux and Poisson, when they felt queer, managed to dash as far as the pork-butcher's shop. Breeding always tells." - Emile Zola
"The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate." - Euripedes NULL
"We see by these instances what homage the world has formerly paid to beards; and that a barber was not then allowed to make those depredations on the faces of the learned which have been permitted him of late years." - Eustace Budgell
"Imagination, devotion, perseverance, together with divine grace, will assure your success." - Haile Selassie