This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"To the extent that you pray from your soul for the one who spread scandal about you, God will reveal the truth to those who were told the scandal." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL
"Do not lose your inward peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"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
"You know, Monsieur, that, although the contemplative life is more perfect than the active life, it is not, however, more so than one which embraces at the same time contemplation and action, as does yours, by God's grace." - Saint Vincent de Paul
"Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world." - Samuel Butler
"None of my 'clients' - not Eichmann, not Stangl, not Mengele, and not even Hitler or Stalin - was born a criminal. Somebody had to teach them to hate: maybe the society, maybe the politics, maybe just a Jewish prostitute." - Simon Wiesenthal
"From the hour you're born you begin to die. But between birth and death there's life." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings." - Stanley Kunitz, fully Stanley Jasspon Kunitz
"South America had been an island continent, far bigger and far more diverse than Australia, for tens of millions of years before the Isthmus of Panama rose just a couple of million years ago. The resulting flood of North American mammals across the new land bridge corresponds in time with the decimation of the native South American fauna. In fact, most large mammals generally considered distinctly South American... are all recent migrants from North America." - Stephan Jay Gould
"The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get re-rooted. If they succeed at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition. When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. If we find ways to cherish and develop our spiritual heritage, we will avoid the kind of alienation that is destroying society, and we will become whole again. ... Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"If we do not know how to take care of ourselves and to love ourselves, we cannot take care of the people we love. Loving oneself is the foundation for loving another person." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs." - Thomas Hardy
"I thought the work would be very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but, if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy, and to read what he pleases." - Thomas Jefferson
"ust surrender to the wave of the Great Change. Neither happy nor afraid. And when it is time to go, then simply go - without any unnecessary fuss." - Ch'ien, fully T'ao Chien or Tao Qian, aka Tao Yuan-ming NULL
"With a good heredity, nature deals you a fine hand at cards; and with a good environment, you learn to play the hand well." - Walter C. Alvarez, fully Walter Clement Alvarez
"The dearest idol I have known, whatever that idol be, help me to tear it from thy throne , and worship only thee." - William Cowper
"Coolidge has the best idea on this farm relief. He said, 'Farmers, you are in a hole. I can't help you, but I will get in with you.' He did. That made it fine so the farmers were satisfied as long as Coolidge was going to get in with them." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination. But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"Or heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Man: "I have no sympathy for a man who is intoxicated all the time." WC: "A man who's intoxicated all the time doesn't need sympathy."" - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
"Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
"One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be." - Wallace Stevens
"But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder - I believe she stole it from her mother’s Spanish maid - a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim; a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented them from overflowing - and as we drew away from each other, and with aching veins attended to what was probably a prowling cat, there came from the house her mother’s voice calling her, with a rising frantic note - and Dr. Cooper ponderously limped out into the garden. But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since - until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"We will discover that there are systems and structures that inevitably lead to aggression, exploitation, and war. We have accepted aggression as a way of living. We create and entrench ourselves in structures which culminate in wars. Retaining the structures and avoiding wars is not possible. You and I as individuals have to realize how we are responsible, how we cooperate with the systems and thereby participate in the violence and wars. And then we must begin to inquire whether we can discontinue cooperating with the systems, whether we can stop participating in wars, and explore alternative ways of living for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar
"One can never be the judge of another's grief. That which is a sorrow to one, to another is joy. Let us not dispute with any one concerning the reality of his sufferings; it is with sorrows as with countries - each man has his own." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"Feed a crow and it will pluck out your eyes." - Turkish Proverbs
"How could I, blest with thee, long nights employ; And how with the longest day enjoy!" - Tibullus, fully Albius Tibullus NULL
"We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with bluff, but they couldn't stay there; the military tension was too much for them." - William James
"The qualities we have do not make us so ridiculous as those which we affect to have." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I lose count of how many bottles of Sardinian wine we drink before Deborah introduces to the table the suggestion that we follow a nice American custom here tonight by joining hands-and each in turn-saying what we are most grateful for. In three languages, then, this montage of gratitude comes forth, one testimony at a time." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I was full of a hot, powerful sadness and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to, remembering something my Guru once said -- that you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Let your conscience be your guide." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"I have been aware all the time did my peoples, spread far and wide Throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which i have now finished with dedicated search solemnity." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life." - Dorothy Parker
"The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones." - Emile Zola
"I know how your visit and my strange behavior must have affected you, he wrote. The sight of your face after all these years completely unnerved me. I could not think, I could not speak. It was as if all my dreams of freedom, the whole world of the living, were concentrated in the shiny little trinket that was dangling from your watch-chain. I couldn't take my eyes off it, I couldn't keep my hand from playing with it. It absorbed my whole being. And all the time I felt how nervous you were at my silence, and I couldn't utter a word." - Emma Goldman
"If you participate in life, you don?t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubbornness in denying that maxim." - Gustave Flaubert
"I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times... The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breathe with them." - Gustave Flaubert
"Never have things of the spirit counted for so little. Never has hatred for everything great been so manifest ? disdain for beauty, execration of literature. I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it." - Gustave Flaubert
"True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can't disarm their enemy." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken