This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Whence come the powerful impression that is made upon us by the tomb? Are a few grains of dust deserving of our veneration? Certainly not; we respect the ashes of our ancestors for this reason only--because a secret voice whispers to us that all is not extinguished in them. It is this that confers a sacred character on the funeral ceremony among all the nations of the globe; all are alike persuaded that the sleep, even of the tomb, is not everlasting, and that death is but a glorious transfiguration." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"There are certain emotions which can find expression only in silence.)" - Victor Hugo
"Mediocre men sometimes fear great office, and when they do not aim at it, or when they refuse it, all that is to be concluded is that they are aware of their mediocrity." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"Solitude is to the mind what fasting is to the body, fatal if it is too prolonged, and yet necessary." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"There would be no errors that die of themselves, made ??clear." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad." - Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden
"Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil." - William Godwin
"Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant according to the law! Oh, God! give me poverty! Shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them with all thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of authority! Suffer me at least to call life, the pursuits of life, my own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of the beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of monopolists and kings!" - William Godwin
"Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can." - William Gouge
"Power is, therefore, a word which we may use both in an active and in a passive signification; and in psychology we may apply it both to the active faculty and to the passive capacity of the mind." - William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
"Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not." - William James
"If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system." - William James
"Often quoted in forms that correspond only loosely to Hugo's original words, for example: No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation." - William James
"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." - William James
"Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"You are not happy because you are well. You are well because you are happy. You are not depressed because trouble has come to you, but trouble has come to you because you are depressed. You can change your thoughts and feelings, and then the outer things will come to correspond, and indeed there is no other way of working." - Emmet Fox
"All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." - English Proverbs
"When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?" - Ernst Toller
"To learn a profession (calling) doesn't mean that you are called. To obtain money doesn't mean that you are rich. To marry doesn't mean that you have learned to love. To build a house doesn't mean that you are at home." - Eugen Drewermann
"To those who are longing for a higher life, who deeply feel the need of religious satisfactions, we suggest that there is a way in which the demands of the head and the heart may be reconciled. Religion is not necessarily allied with dogma, a new kind of faith is possible, based not upon legend and tradition, not upon the authority of any book, but upon the moral nature of man." - Felix Adler
"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly