This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Whether by justice, or by fraud oblique,the earthly race of men, a loftier wall ascends, my mind is dubious." - Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL
"The ninth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever is prejudicial to truth, or injurious to our own, or our neighbor's good name." - Westminster Shorter Catechism, aka Shorter Catechism or Westminster Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian NULL
"I was a poet too; but modern taste is so refined and delicate and chaste, that verse, whatever fire the fancy warms, without a creamy smoothness has no charms. Thus, all success depending on an ear, and thinking I might purchase it too dear, if sentiment were sacrific'd to sound, and truth cut short to make a period round, I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse than caper in the morris-dance of verse." - William Cowper
"A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"Toscanini was hailing a great artist, but that voice was more than a magnificent personal talent. It was the religious voice of a whole religious people — probably the most God-obsessed (and man-despised) people since the ancient Hebrews." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, no sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson, come and share my haunch of venison. I have too a bin of claret, good, but better when you share it. Tho' 'tis only a small bin, there's a stock of it within. And as sure as I'm a rhymer, half a butt of Rudeheimer. Come; among the sons of men is one welcomer than Alfred Tennyson?" - Walter Savage Landor
"Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives immortal youth to mortal maids." - Walter Savage Landor
"Under the discipline of unity, knowledge and morality come together. No longer can we have that paltry 'objective' knowledge so prized by the academic specialists. To know anything at all becomes a moral predicament. Aware that there is no such thing as a specialized effect, one becomes responsible for judgments as well as facts. Aware that as an agricultural scientist he had 'one great subject,' Sir Albert Howard could no longer ask, “What can I do with what I know?” without at the same time asking, “How can I be responsible for what I know?”" - Wendell Berry
"[Charles Dickens was] the bravest man who ever lived. He fathered ten children before they became tax deductions." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
"Whether you try to influence the mind through ideas and concepts, or through discipline and vows, or through drugs, you are trying to stimulate artificially a state of silence. Perhaps if we are friendly with the mind, if we watch the mind, if we understand the mind, if we let it wander, let it roam about wherever it wants, let it exhaust its momentum by wandering, without scolding, without praising, without" - Vimala Thakar
"What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"My voice stuck in my throat." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
"As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Sigmund Freud once asserted, “Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.” Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the individual differences did not blur but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential." - Vannevar Bush
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Tripitaka or Tipitaka NULL
"But the Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document: it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one." - William James
"White House pressrooms (no matter which political party is in charge) toss out a huge dump of bad news around 5:00 PM every Friday. Which as far as I can tell is at least five hours after the media corps has clocked out for a three-martini lunch with no intention of coming back to work until Monday." - Drew Curtis
"Society is no comfort to one not sociable." - William Shakespeare
"I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise." - Eugen Herrigel
"If we do not at least try to manifest something of Creative Charity in our dealings with life, whether by action, thought, or prayer, and do it at our own cost -- if we roll up the talent of love in the nice white napkin of piety and put it safely out of the way, sorry that the world is so hungry and thirsty, so sick and so fettered, and leave it at that: then, even that little talent may be taken from us. We may discover at the crucial moment that we are spiritually bankrupt." - Evelyn Underhill
"More than ever before, we need to learn and apply the principles of economic self-reliance. We do not know when the crisis involving sickness or unemployment may affect our own circumstances. We do know that the Lord has decreed global calamities for the future and has warned and forewarned us to be prepared. For this reason the Brethren have repeatedly stressed a 'back to basics' program for temporal and spiritual welfare." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed innocent civilians in Dresden and dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets." - Feisal Abdul Rauf
"The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending." - Italian Proverbs
"With patience you go beyond knowledge." - Italian Proverbs