This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"To captivate our varied and worldwide audience of all ages, the nature and treatment of the fairy tale, the legend, the myth have to be elementary, simple. Good and evil, the antagonists of all great drama in some guise, must be believably personalized. The moral ideals common to all humanity must be upheld. The victories must not be too easy. Strife to test valor is still and will always be the basic ingredient of the animated tale, as of all screen entertainments." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere -- probably more than the rest of the world combined. Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations -- many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"It may be the work of the church to name empire for what it is." - Walter Brueggemann
"Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade." - Walter Savage Landor
"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts." - Washington Irving
"The man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, and who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts, that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them." - Washington Irving
"Adversity and loss make a man wise." - Welsh Proverbs
"It was a country . . . that he and his people had known how to use and abuse, but not how to preserve." - Wendell Berry
"Earth, receive an honored guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie emptied of its poetry." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"There is probably no act, for instance, which does good to anyone without doing harm to someone else, and vice versa." - W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross
"But then what should I have done with you, Nina, how should I have disposed of the store of sadness that had gradually accumulated as a result of our seemingly carefree, but really hopeless meetings?" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the size of human suffering is absolutely relative." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
"Dharma is so called because it sustains or supports society (from the root dhri meaning to support). The people of a country are held together and sustained by Dharma." - Valmiki NULL
"There is no greater sin than coveting another man’s wife." - Valmiki NULL
"We quarrel unfortunate for us to dispense with pity." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. One who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach." - Tryon Edwards
"I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps" - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two, and sleep's again." - William Shakespeare
"Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned, bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou com'st in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee." - William Shakespeare
"We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"And love is always complicated. But still humans most try to love each other, darling. We must get out hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play." - Emile Zola
"The sun was lying when he lay so sweet and calm amidst the serenity of the night." - Emile Zola
"For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!" - Emma Goldman
"Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"In other words, it is not so much a question as to whether we are able to cure a patient, whether we can or not, but whether we should or not." - Ernest Becker
"But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"When people ask for educationÂ… I think what they are really looking for is ideas that would make the world, and their own lives, intelligible to them. When a thing is intelligible you have a sense of participation; when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"You cannot receive vibrationally something that you are not a vibrational match to. And so, bless those who are finding abundance. And in your blessing of them and their abundance, you will become abundant too." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"Surely the preservation and enjoyment of the freedoms vouchsafed to us by the Constitution of the United States will require eternal vigilance even to the guarding of it with our lives… We must ever be on our guard against the unsound theories that would strike at our Constitutional freedoms. We must ever keep faith with our founding fathers by keeping faith with our Constitution. I trust that we all have faith in the Constitution of the United States, and that that faith is born of an assurance that this great document came into being through the inspiration of God to wise men, embodying as it does, eternal principles. This nation has a spiritual foundation which must be preserved at any cost of sweat and blood. May we recognize our debt and responsibility and be ever vigilant. The need for this eternal and constant vigilance is seen in some prophetic words of Daniel Webster, given in 1802: “Next to correct morals and watchful guardianship over the Constitution is the proper means for its support. No human advantage is indefensible. The fairest productions of man have in themselves or receive from accident a tendency to decay. Unless the Constitution be constantly fostered on the principles which created it, its excellency will fade; and it will feel, even in its infancy, the weakness and decrepitude of age. “Our form of government is superior to all others, inasmuch as it provides, in a fair and honorable manner for its own amendment. But it requires no gift or prophecy to foresee that this privilege may be seized on by demagogues, to introduce wild and destructive innovations. Under the gentle name of amendments, changes may be proposed which, if unresisted, will undermine the national compact, mar its fairest features, and reduce it finally to a dead letter. It abates nothing of the danger to say that alterations may be trifling and inconsiderable. If the Constitution be picked away by piecemeal, it is gone — and gone as effectually as if some military despot had grasped it at once, trampled it beneath his feet, and scattered its loose leaves in the wild winds.” If we are to keep faith with our Constitution, we must know it. Since it is the basis of our American way of life and our liberties every American should be familiar with it. We should read it periodically. How can people who are ignorant of the principles and guarantees of American government stand up in defense of it and our rights under the Constitution? The fundamentals and processes of free government should be known to every school boy — and his parents. No free people can ever survive if they are ignorant of and fail to understand the principles of free government!" - Ezra Taft Benson
"The Lord raised up the Founding Fathers. He it was who established the Constitution of this land — the greatest document of freedom ever written. This God-inspired Constitution is not outmoded. It is not an outdated “agrarian document” as some of our would-be statesmen, socialists, and fellow travelers of the godless conspiracy would have us believe. It was the Lord God who established the foundation of this nation; and woe be unto those — members of the Supreme Court and others — who would weaken this foundation." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within." - Hannah Arendt
"So good that he is good for nothing." - Italian Proverbs
"Who divides honey with the bear, will be like to get the lesser share." - Italian Proverbs
"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