This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
"I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
"The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
"In these pages your imaginations, your desires, your passions are given life; Thoughts take shape that turn into dreams and our aspirations all start with a dream. Reading is where those dreams really can come true over and over again." - Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
"I knew that the languages which one learns there are necessary to understand the works of the ancients; and that the delicacy of fiction enlivens the mind; that famous deeds of history ennoble it and, if read with understanding, aid in maturing one's judgment; that the reading of all the great books is like conversing with the best people of earlier times; it is even studied conversation in which the authors show us only the best of their thoughts; that eloquence has incomparable powers and beauties; that poetry has enchanting delicacy and sweetness; that mathematics has very subtle processes which can serve as much to satisfy the inquiring mind as to aid all the arts and diminish man's labor; that treatises on morals contain very useful teachings and exhortations to virtue; that theology teaches us how to go to heaven; that philosophy teaches us to talk with appearance of truth about things, and to make ourselves admired by the less learned; that law, medicine, and the other sciences bring honors and wealth to those who pursue them; and finally, that it is desirable to have examined all of them, even to the most superstitious and false in order to recognize their real worth and avoid being deceived thereby" - René Descartes
"It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject without a great deal of loss of precious time." - Richard Baxter
"Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy Scriptures ever have the preeminence. Let Scripture be first and most in your hearts and hands and other books be used as subservient to it. While reading ask yourself: 1. Could I spend this time no better? 2. Are there better books that would edify me more? 3. Are the lovers of such a book as this the greatest lovers of the Book of God and of a holy life? 4. Does this book increase my love to the Word of God, kill my sin, and prepare me for the life to come?" - Richard Baxter
"Welcome to a dangerous new era - the Unlightenment - in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They're everywhere - reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about chakras and healing energies, praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favor of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We've got to respect their beliefs, apparently. Well I don't... Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb. Buy a pillow. Don't make up a load of floaty blah about energy or destiny. This is the real world, stupid. We should be solving problems, not sticking our fingers in our ears and singing about fairies. Everywhere you look, screaming gittery is taking root, with serious consequences. The NHS recently spent " - Richard Dawkins
"I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
"As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character." - Richard Whately
"Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors." - Richard Whately
"Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
"Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous." - Robertson Davies
"Books give no wisdom where none was before, but where some is, there reading makes it more." - Robertson Davies
"Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best." - Robertson Davies
"The Bible takes much of its color from whoever is reading it, and it provides a text to support almost every shade of opinion, however preposterous." - Robertson Davies
"There are great numbers of people to whom the act of reading a book " - Robertson Davies
"There are times when I think that the reading I have done in the past has had no effect except to cloud my mind and make me indecisive." - Robertson Davies
"There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that." - Robert Benchley, fully Robert Charles Benchley
"There is creative reading as well as creative writing." - Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
"Every man hath liberty to write, but few ability. Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers, that either write for vain-glory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put out trifles, rubbish and trash. Among so many thousand Authors you shall scarce find one by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse; by which he is rather infected than any way perfected" - Robert Burton
"No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one." - Robert Byrne, fully Robert Leo Byrne
"Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"Enter into the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed again to enter the Church, be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
"If then we have angels, let us be sober, as though we were in the presence of tutors; for there is a demon present also." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
"Let us pass to the despotic part of the soul, spirit. We must not eliminate it utterly from the youth nor yet allow him to use it all the time. Let us train boys from earliest childhood to be patient when they suffer wrongs themselves, but, if they see another being wronged, to sally forth courageously and aid the sufferer in fitting measure. –" - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
"Musicke doth withdraw our mindes from earthly cogitations, lifteth up our spirits into heaven, maketh them light and celestial" - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
"The criminal excesses of unlimited capitalistic liberty had soon been checked thanks to the unlimited liberty of the press." - Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo
"The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Samuel Adams
"The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way." - Samuel Butler
"The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day." - Samuel Gompers
"It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad." - Samuel Richardson
"Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"We can now determine, easily and relatively cheaply, the detailed chemical architecture of genes; and we can trace the products of these genes (enzymes and proteins) as they influence the course of embryology. In so doing we have made the astounding discovery that all complex animal phyla - arthropods and vertebrates in particular - have retained, despite their half-billion years of evolutionary independence, an extensive set of common genetic blueprints for building bodies." - Stephan Jay Gould
"If their occupation is actual work they prefer to pump water into cisterns," - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock
"Aside from the moral contamination incident to the average theatre, the influence intellectually is degrading. Its lessons are morbid, distorted, and superficial; they do not mirror life." - Theodore T. Munger
"It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
"Might but the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as is my delight in external beauty!" - Thomas Arnold
"We've been caught up in a mechanistic world, because what we make, makes us. We make the automobile, the automobile makes us. We make an industrial economy, the industrial economy makes us. We are now in a weird dream world of industrial technological imagination. Who would be so destructive to the very basis out of which we exist, that we spoil our water and our air? For what? To invent an industrial economy. We are so brilliant scientifically and so absurd in any other way. We are into a deep cultural pathology -- in ordinary language, we are crazy. To think that we can have a viable human economy by destroying the Earth economy is absurd." - Thomas Berry
"No mother is so tender of the fruit of her womb as God is of his children," - Thomas Boston
"It is the first of all problems for a man (or woman) to find out what kind of work he (or she) is to do in this universe." - Thomas Carlyle
"Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joints, but so many Wheels, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, Man." - Thomas Hobbes