This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I still feel just as I told you, that I shall come safely out of this war. I felt so the other day when danger was near. I certainly enjoyed the excitement of fighting our way out of Giles to the Narrows as much as any excitement I ever experienced. I had a good deal of anxiety the first hour or two on account of my command, but not a particle on my own account. After that, and after I saw that we were getting on well, it was really jolly. We all joked and laughed and cheered constantly." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
"I recall how miserable I was, and how one day you brought me to a realization of my miserable state. I was preparing to deliver a eulogy upon the emperor in which I would tell plenty of lies with the object of winning favor with the well-informed by my lying; so my heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts. As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merry. I groaned and pointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardships our idiotic enterprises entailed. Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being dragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed solely to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of the few paltry coins he had collected by begging this man was enjoying the temporal happiness for which I strove by so bitter, devious and roundabout a contrivance. His joy was no true joy, to be sure, but what I was seeking in my ambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniably happy while I was full of foreboding; he was carefree, I apprehensive. If anyone had questioned me as to whether I would rather be exhilarated or afraid, I would of course have replied, Exhilarated; but if the questioner had pressed me further, asking whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or to be as I was then, I would have chosen to be myself, laden with anxieties and fears. Surely that would have been no right choice, but a perverse one? I could not have preferred my condition to his on the grounds that I was better educated, because that fact was not for me a source of joy but only the means by which I sought to curry favor with human beings: I was not aiming to teach them but only to win their favor." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"I know by myself how incomprehensible God is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my own being." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
"If I had to advise parents, I should tell them to take great care about the people with whom their children associate . . . Much harm may result from bad company, and we are inclined by nature to follow what is worse than what is better." - Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, fully Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton
"His path has been trodden from the ages and from all generations by the cross and by death. How is it with you that the afflictions on the path seem to you to be off the path? Do you not wish to follow the steps of the saints? Or have you plans for devising some way of your own, and of journeying therein without suffering." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"I thank God for having given the Company subjects who belong more to Him than to themselves, and who serve the neighbor at the risk of their lives! They are like unrefined gold, which becomes visible in fire and which would otherwise remain hidden under ordinary actions and sometimes under faults and failings." - Saint Vincent de Paul
"In spite of all evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance plays a great part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning. But we live on a broken mirror, and fresh cracks appear in its surface every day." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"'That's the right answer.' And he said, 'If there's anything you would like to ask me about my writing, I would be happy to reply.' I think the little bastard might well be a writer!" - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms." - Samuel Butler
"There seems to me no money that is so iniquitous or that is more dishonorable to us as a nation than that insatiable greed which drags the children into the mills and factories and grinds their young bones into dollars. To me it seems that the child of the nineteenth century should be something more than a machine." - Samuel Gompers
"As love without esteem is volatile and capricious, esteem without love is languid and cold." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"To hear complaints is wearisome to the wretched and the happy alike." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times. Some people are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows." - Sydney J. Harris
"Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies." - Simone Weil
"Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness." - Simone Weil
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’ ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment. ‘Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter that night." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that I have not lived wholly in vain, he remarked. If my record were closed to-night I could still survey it with equanimity. The air of London is the sweeter for my presence." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"The divine Instructor is trustworthy, adorned as He is with three of the fairest ornament-knowledge, benevolence, and authority of utterance: with knowledge, for He is the paternal wisdom: 'All Wisdom is from the Lord, and with Him for evermore;' with authority of utterance, for He is God and Creator: 'For all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made;' and with benevolence, for He alone gave Himself a sacrifice for us." - Clement of Alexandria, originally Titus Flavius Clemens NULL
"To say the truth, I go so far as to praise and congratulate them. Yea! would that I were one of those who contend and incur hatred for the truth’s sake: or rather, I can boast of being one of them. For better is a laudable war than a peace which severs a man from God: and therefore it is that the Spirit arms the gentle warrior, as one who is able to wage war in a good cause." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
"We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing." - Stanislaw Lec, fully Stanisław Jerzy Lec, born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz
"Am I capable of deceiving my friend? Julien asked himself peevishly. This being, for whom hypocrisy and an absence of all sympathy were the usual methods of protecting himself, could not bear, this time, the thought of the slightest trickiness in dealing with a man for whom he had friendly feelings." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision." - Stephan Jay Gould
"Henry Fairfield Osborn, the dominant paleontologist of his era, and long time director of the American Museum of Natural History, gave the standard version in his popular book of 1918, The Origin and Evolution of Life... Lamarck attributed the lengthening of the [giraffe's] neck to the inheritance of bodily modifications caused by the neck-stretching habit. Darwin attributed the lengthening of the neck to the constant selection of individuals and races which were born with the longest necks. Darwin was probably right. ...The version has held ever since." - Stephan Jay Gould
"Lernaeodiscus porcellanae turns control of the host into a fine art. After castration by the parasite, male crabs develop female characteristics in both anatomy and behavior, while females become even more feminized. The emerging externa then takes the same form and position as the crab's own egg mass... The crabs then treat the externa as their own brood. In other words, the parasite usurps all the complex care normally invested in the crab's own progeny." - Stephan Jay Gould
"It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining." - Stephen Hawking
"It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. It's a crazy world out there. Be curious." - Stephen Hawking
"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" - Stephen Hawking
"You cannot understand the glories of the universe without believing there is some Supreme Power behind it." - Stephen Hawking
"In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul, there rages a frantic prisoner who, as a Fascist, turns the world into a prison." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"There is some reason to fear that the involvement of non-Western peoples in the conflicts of industrial society, long overdue in itself, will be less to the benefit of the liberated peoples than to that of rationally improved production and communications, and a modestly raised standard of living." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"Justice is the idea of God; the ideal of men; the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind." - Theodore Parker
"We need not renounce the use of conventional force. We will be ready to repel any clear and present danger that poses a genuine threat to our national security and survival." - Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen
"The President's decisions make the weather, and if he is great enough, change the climate, too." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White
"A typical vice of American politics — the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"But there is another harm; and it is evident that we should try to do away with that. The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this direction, if it is associated with a corrupt-services act effective to prevent the advantage of the man willing recklessly and unscrupulously to spend money over his more honest competitor. It is particularly important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and freer from confusion for every citizen. I believe that the prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in any given class of cases." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this country and at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn't exist." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
"As a narrow vessel cannot contain the ocean, so neither can the finite creature comprehend the infinite good: but no measure shall be set to the enjoyment, but what ariseth from the capacity of the creature. So that, although there be degrees of glory, yet all shall be filled. . . God will be all in all to the saints: He will be their life, health, riches, honour, peace, and all good things. He will communicate Himself freely to them. . . There will be no veil between God and them, to be drawn aside; but His fulness shall ever stand open to them." - Thomas Boston
"He that hath deserved hanging may be glad to escape with a whipping." - Thomas Brooks
"With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever." - Thomas Hardy
"But what is all this to Justice? for neither, if I sell my goods for as much as I can get for them, doe I injure the buyer, who sought, and desir'd them of me? neither if I divide more of what is mine to him who deserves lesse, so long as I give the other what I have agreed for, do I wrong to either? which truth our Saviour himself, being God, testifies in the Gospell. This therefore is no distinction of Justice, but of equality; yet perhaps it cannot be deny'd, but that Justice is a certain equality, as consisting in this onely; that since we are all equall by nature, one should not arrogate more Right to himselfe, than he grants to another, unlesse he have fairly gotten it by Compact." - Thomas Hobbes