This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The real prize is never delivered by memory or by imagination, but by something above them." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
"What matters deafness of the ears when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind." - Victor Hugo
"Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed" - Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
"Don't be deceived. You must face Destiny. Preparation is only possible now. Don't be fooled by your sunny skies. When the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon your house, your private dwelling, your own family, your own fair hopes, your own strong muscles, your own body, your own soul itself, then it is well-nigh too late to build a house. You can only go inside what house you have and pray that it is founded upon the Rock. Be not deceived by distance in time or space, or the false security of a bank account and an automobile and good health and willing hands to work. Thousands, perhaps millions as good as you have had all these things and are perishing in body and, worse still, in soul today." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
"We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men." - Thucydides NULL
"You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational." - Thucydides NULL
"And in the end, having my freedom, boast of nothing else but that I was a journeyman to grief?" - William Shakespeare
"CELIA: Not a word? ROSALIND: Not one to throw at a dog." - William Shakespeare
"Lord, for the erring thought not into evil wrought: Lord, for the wicked will betrayed and baffled still: For the heart from itself kept, Our thanksgiving accept." - William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
"Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!" - William James
"Men must not content themselves with the lawfulness of their employments, but must consider whether they use them, as they are to use everything, as strangers and pilgrims that are baptized into the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we are to follow Him in a wise and heavenly course of life, in the mortification of the worldly desires, and in purifying and preparing their souls for the blessed enjoyment of God. For to be vain, or proud, or covetous, or ambitious, in the common course of our business, is as contrary to these holy tempers of Christianity as cheating and dishonesty. If a glutton were to say, in excuse of his gluttony, that he only eats such things as it is lawful to eat, he would make as good an excuse for himself as the greedy, covetous, ambitious tradesman that would say that he only deals in lawful business. For, as a Christian is not only required to be honest, but to be of a Christian spirit, and make his life an exercise of humility, repentance, and heavenly affection, so all tempers that are contrary to these are as contrary to Christianity as cheating is contrary to honesty." - William Law
"Misers mistake gold for their good; whereas it is only the means of obtaining it." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Moderation in people who are contented comes from that calm that good fortune lends to their spirit." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough." - Elif Safak
"Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?" - Elif Safak
"One would expect writers and artists to understand one another better than anyone else and to be more appreciative of one another's works. That, sadly, is not always the case. Writers Rarely say anything positive About each Other." - Elif Safak
"So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism. Christianity simply does not share that deep and consistent historical reverence toward matrimony. Lately it has, yes- but not originally. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked that flat-out whoring but only very marginally." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an 'Annus Horribilis'." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"Are we then bound to others only by the enforcement of laws." - Émile Souvestre
"We journey to the day, and tell each other how we sang to keep the dark away." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
"The higher the voice the smaller the intellect. " - Ernest Newman
"For we may ask in return, what has any secret purpose to do with our role of judgment and action? “Secret things,” we are told, “belong unto the Lord our God; but things which are revealed, unto us and to our children.” The question taken from the hidden purposes of the divine mind, can have no force whatever, because it is an appeal to our ignorance. We know, and can know nothing about them. One thing, however, we do know. God must be always and everywhere consistent with himself; and whether we can understand it or not, it is certain that there can be no inconsistency between revealed and unrevealed truths; and if God has made an offer of eternal life through the atonement unto all men, and commanded all men to embrace it, there cannot be in any purpose of God concerning its nature, anything which will clash with, and so contradict this universal offer." - Erskine Mason
"The bad times I can handle. It's the good times that drive me crazy. When is the other shoe going to drop?" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"Not everyone is as honest as Freud was when he said that he cured the miseries of the neurotic only to open him up to the normal misery of life." - Ernest Becker
"There is evidence that the faculty of reflection will appear as soon as our senses begin to develop, and it is equally true that we have the use of the senses from an early age, just because at an early age we began to reflect." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"If we're trying to set education policy, we have to listen to the education experts." - Eugene Peterson
"The only cure for cynicism is to bring it out behind the scenes. It is a parasite on faith. The reason that many of us donÂ’t ardently believe in the gospel is that we have never given it a rigorous testing, thrown our hard questions at it, faced it with our most prickly doubts." - Eugene Peterson
"Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force." - Euripedes NULL
"Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand." - Euripedes NULL
"Frankly, said the Doctor, I am at a loss to understand my own emotions. I can think of no entertainment that fills me with greater detestation than a display of competitive athletics, none - except possibly folk dancing." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle ''promise'' from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"More people rust out than wear out." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When all men say you are an ass it is time to bray." - Italian Proverbs
"When the sun shines on thee, thou needest not care for the moon." - Italian Proverbs
"You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Italian Proverbs