This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Nature always… knows where and when to stop. Greater even than the mystery of natural growth is the mystery of the natural cessation of growth. There is measure in all natural things – in their size, speed, or violence. As a result, the system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Take the time to line up the Energy first, and action becomes inconsequential. If you don't take the time to line up the Energy, if you don't find the feeling place of what you're looking for, not enough action in the world will make any difference." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"The law of attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you FEEL." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"The thought that you think, you think, which attracts to it - so you think it some more, which attracts to it - so you think it some more. In other words, when you have an expectation, you've got a dominant thought going on, and Law of Attraction is going to deliver that to you again and again and again." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"When you ask it is given - but at some point you have to stop asking and start expecting." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"When God gives a child, he also gives the clothing." - Estonian Proverbs
"Whence comes to man the most sustainable of the pleasures of his heart, the pleasure of melancholy , this charming full of secrets , who is living his pain and s' love even in the sense of its ruin? [Where does the most enduring human enjoyments of his heart, the pleasure of melancholy, this charming full of secrets, which makes its living pain and still love the feeling of ruin?]" - Étienne Pivert de Senancour
"If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: “teaching” God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting." - Eugen Drewermann
"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Eugen Drewermann
"Why are we put on the spot of being God’s defender. We are expected to explain God to his disappointed clients. We’re thrust into the role of a clerk at Wal-Mart’s customer service desk – the complaints department of humanity." - Eugene Peterson
"HOGAN: No, I wouldn't think it, but my motto in life is never trust anyone too far, not even myself." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"If you let people break your spirit and detour you from your path, then you have not been true to yourself or those you're here to touch, those who believe in you." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. ThatÂ’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"When she was running for the Senate, Hillary's psephologists discovered that the one group that really hated her was white, middle-aged men of property. She got the whole thing immediately — I heard she said, "I remind them of their first wife."" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"A good name is still to be preferred over great riches. Especially it is to be preferred to the appearance of riches, acquired with nothing down and nothing to pay for 2 months." - Ezra Taft Benson
"If anybody ever shuts you in Indiana...and you don't at least write some unconstrained something or other, I give up hope for your salvation." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"If appropriate choices are made humans may yet live in an integral relationship with the earth community. If they are not made, some believe natural disasters will sweep over the earth radically altering life in ways that are unforeseeable, but are expected to severelly diminish complex webs of life and render whole species extinct." -
"Follow the three R's: - Respect for self. - Respect for others. - Responsibility for all your actions. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"Believed in heroes and Nietzsche, in his youth, he was a hero worshiper. First Arthur Schopenhauer's bespectacled visage stared from his shrine and after que the place of sacredness and honor was held by Richard Wagner. When the Wagner of the philosopher's dreams turned into a very prosaic Wagner of flesh and blood, there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for poor Nietzsche. But he had courage as well as loyalty, and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and the bit crunched underfoot." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"No one gets rich quickly if he is honest." - Italian Proverbs
"No one perceives where the shoe pinches but he who wears it." - Italian Proverbs
"The first woman you marry is your wife, the second a companion, the third is nonsense." - Italian Proverbs
"And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring? passed out of all knowledge." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes; and this is like a fragment of their song, if it can be like their song without their music... As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up - probably somebody lighting a wood-fire-and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again. He got up trembling." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Aragorn threw back his cloak. The elven-sheath glittered as he grasped it, and the bright blade of And£ril shone like a sudden flame as he swept it out. 'Elendil!' he cried. 'I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar, the Elfstone, D£nadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"As you go down the water,? he said, ?you will find that the trees will fail, and you will come to a barren country. There the River flows in stony vales amid high moors, until at last after many leagues it comes to the tall island of the Tindrock, that we call Tol Brandir. There it casts its arms about the steep shores of the isle, and falls then with a great noise and smoke over the cataracts of Rauros down into the Nindalf, the Wetwang as it is called in your tongue. That is a wide region of sluggish fen where the stream becomes tortuous and much divided. There the Entwash flows in by many mouths from the Forest of Fangorn in the west. About that stream, on this side of the Great River, lies Rohan. On the further side are the bleak hills of the Emyn Muil. The wind blows from the East there, for they look out over the Dead Marshes and the Noman-lands to Cirith Gorgor and the black gates of Mordor." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Behind that, there was something else at work, beyond any design of the ring maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors!' I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered. I liked white better,' I said. White!' he sneered. 'It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.' In which case it is no longer white,' said I. 'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien