This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer." - Thomas Carlyle
"We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies." - Thomas Dekker
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past." - Thomas Jefferson
"Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions." - Thomas Jefferson
"He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire." - Thomas Merton
"I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts." - Thomas Merton
"May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. It is more than silence." - Thomas Merton
"Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view." - Thomas Nagel
"The seductive appeal of objective reality depends on a mistake. It is not the given. Sometimes ... the truth is not found by traveling as far away from one's personal perspective as possible." - Thomas Nagel
"The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd! " - Thomas Tickell
"Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen." - Tim McGraw, fully Samuel Timothy "Tim" McGraw
"For the unconquerable mind. We give You thanks, O God, for the harvest of knowledge, patiently gathered over long years by ongoing generations of scholars, and now laid up for the needs of humanity in our universities. For the increasing mastery of special skills, for victory over ills which people have suffered through ignorance, for confidence in the reliable order of nature, for the wisdom which long experience adds to much learning, for ever new light falling on old mysteries, as for all the joys of our part and portion in the unconquerable mind: we give thanks." - Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry
"A Fable - A raven, while with glossy breast Her new-laid eggs she fondly press'd, And, on her wicker-work high mounted, Her chickens prematurely counted (A fault philosophers might blame, If quite exempted from the same), Enjoy'd at ease the genial day; 'Twas April, as the bumpkins say, The legislature call'd it May. But suddenly a wind, as high As ever swept a winter sky, Shook the young leaves about her ears, And fill'd her with a thousand fears, Lest the rude blast should snap the bough, And spread her golden hopes below. But just at eve the blowing weather And all her fears were hush'd together: And now, quoth poor unthinking Ralph. 'Tis over, and the brood is safe; (For ravens, though, as birds of omen, They teach both conjurors and old women To tell us what is to befall, Can’t prophesy themselves at all.) The morning came, when neighbour Hodge, Who long had mark'd her airy lodge, And destined all the treasure there A gift to his expecting fair, Climb’d like a squirrel to his dray, And bore the worthless prize away. Moral: 'Tis Providence alone secures In every change both mine and yours: Safety consists not in escape From dangers of a frightful shape; An earthquake may be bid to spare The man that’s strangled by a hair. Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oft’nest in what least we dread, Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow. " - William Cowper
"Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books." - William Cowper
"Write on my gravestone: Infidel, Traitor. --infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people." - Wendell Phillips
"Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally." - Walter Lippmann
"The monument of the greatest man should be only a bust and a name. - If the name alone is insufficient to illustrate the bust, let them both perish." - Walter Savage Landor
"When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, books only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow." - Washington Irving
"Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old." - Washington Irving
"All emanates from Source!...You're not this body and its accomplishments. You are the observer. Notice it all; and be grateful for the abilities you've been given, the motivation to achieve, and the stuff you've accumulated. But give all the credit to the power of intention, which brought you into existence." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Do not administer punishment when angry." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"In a modern war, fought with modern weapons and on the modern scale, neither side can limit to “the enemy” the damage that it does. These wars damage the world. We know enough by now to know that you cannot damage a part of the world without damaging all of it. Modern war has not only made it impossible to kill “combatants” without killing “noncombatants,” it has made it impossible to damage your enemy without damaging yourself." - Wendell Berry
"How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"What caused the war? The greed of the Italian money bags and capitalists, who need new markets and new achievements for Italian imperialism. What kind of war was it? A perfected, civilised blood bath, the massacre of Arabs with the help of the “latest” weapons." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"Growing into Silence - The voluntary cessation, non-action of movement, can become possible if the brain, the cerebral organ, is not a restless, disorderly, chaotic brain." - Vimala Thakar
"One has to watch the movements of the mind without trying to control or suppress it. One has to go through the phase of suffocation, embarrassment and void. It is an unavoidable experience of loneliness through which everyone has to go once in his life." - Vimala Thakar
"Silence and Emptiness - In the dimension of silence the movement of thought goes on without creating the illusion of a thinker. The reception of the sensation and the interpretation of the objects surrounding you takes place without the interpreter. The movement of thought goes on without the thinker. There is no centre to say: "I like this and I dislike that, I prefer this and I have a hatred for that". So there is involuntary cerebral activity without the psychological recording or registering. The movement of thought, the movement of knowledge goes on in the body like the movement of breath, of blood. Silence implies the existence of the total human past within you, inside you. It also implies the movement of knowledge, thought, etc. without the knower, without the thinker. The absence of the knower, the thinker, the experiencer, the centre - is the essential part of what we call silence. And because there is no centre, no knower, no experiencer you call it emptiness." - Vimala Thakar
"If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding, or the deck of a tumbling ship -- it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarreling and reconciliation I need privacy--to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"I want to donate, I want you gifts, and solitude in which I reveal my possessions." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Wind and storm colored July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed." - Victor Hugo
"Suddenly finding such a secret in the midst of one's happiness is like the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves." - Victor Hugo
"Wars might never occur, nevertheless they are exercised in military tactics and in hunting, lest perchance they should become effeminate and unprepared for any emergency." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
"It has been said that science is opposed to, and in conflict with revelation. But the history of the former shows that the greater its progress, and the more accurate its investigations and results, the more plainly it is seen not only not to clash with the latter, but in all things to confirm it. The very sciences from which objections have been brought against religion have, by their own progress, removed those objections, and in the end furnished full confirmation of the inspired Word of God." - Tryon Edwards
"The whole party followed, with the exception of Scythrop, who threw himself into his arm-chair, crossed his left foot over his right knee, placed the hollow of his left hand on the interior ancle of his left leg, rested his right elbow on the elbow of the chair, placed the ball of his right thumb against his right temple, curved the forefinger along the upper part of his forehead, rested the point of the middle finger on the bridge of his nose, and the points of the two others on the lower part of the palm, fixed his eyes intently on the veins in the back of his left hand, and sat in this position like the immoveable Theseus, who, as is well known to many who have not been at college, and to some few who have, sedet, oeternumque sedebit. We hope the admirers of the minitiae in poetry and romance will appreciate this accurate description of a pensive attitude." - Thomas Love Peacock
"But such consumption is not consistent with the actual habits of the generality of capitalists.The great object of their lives is to save a fortune, both because it is their duty to make a provision for their families, and because they cannot spend an income with so much comfort to themselves, while they are obliged perhaps to attend a counting house for seven or eight hours a day...There must therefore be a considerable class of persons who have both the will and power to consume more material wealth then they produce, or the mercantile classes could not continue profitably to produce so much more than they consume." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labor lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
"The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder