This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?"" - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
"Reach for a better feeling thought." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"If we're trying to set education policy, we have to listen to the education experts." - Eugene Peterson
"There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations called holiness." - Eugene Peterson
"TYRONE: [Stares at him -- impressed.] Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. [Then protesting uneasily] But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND: [Sardonically] The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"It is not enough merely to win; others must lose." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"If you wish to know what justice is, let injustice pursue you. When you cannot be just because of your nature, be so through your pride." - Eugenio Maria de Hostos (y Bonilla)
"I learned a truth that few people know: that the ' art bestows its consolations especially the artists failed." - Eugenio Montale
"The man of today has inherited a nervous system that cannot stand the current living conditions. Waiting to form the man of tomorrow, today's man reacts to the changed conditions by not objecting to shock but doing mass massificandosi." - Eugenio Montale
"Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed."" - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Humility responds to God's will-to the fear of His judgments and to the needs of those around us. To the proud, the applause of the world rings in their ears; to the humble, the applause of heaven warms their hearts. Someone has said, "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man."" - Ezra Taft Benson
"I hope we can be happy where we are, be grateful for our blessings-now-here, accept the challenge that is ours and make the most of it, and don't be envious of others. God help us to be grateful." - Ezra Taft Benson
"I testify that wickedness is rapidly expanding in every segment of our society. It is more highly organized, more cleverly disguised, and more powerfully promoted than ever before. Secret combinations lusting for power, gain, and glory are flourishing. A secret combination that seeks to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries is increasing its evil influence and control over America and the entire world." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Our Creator endowed each one of us with certain rights at birth, among which are the rights to life, liberty, speech, and conscience, to name a few. These are not just human rights; they are divine rights. When these rights are not permitted expression by a nation, that nation becomes inhibited in its progress and development, and its leaders are responsible before God for suffocating sacred rights. This native endowment is what separates man from the animals. It causes men to want to be good and to seek higher aspirations. It creates in man a desire to better his life and his station in life." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it." - Ezra Taft Benson
"This is not a debate about abortion. This is about a fundamental right to make choices about our sexuality -- without the encroachment of a president, the Supreme Court, and certainly without the encroachment of politicians!" - Faye Wattleton
"The peace that passeth understanding is that which comes when the pain is not relieved, which subsists in the midst of the painful situation, suffusing it, which springs out of the pain itself, which shimmers on the crest of the wave of pain, which is the spear of frustration transfigured into the shaft of light. It is upon those we love that we must anchor ourselves spiritually in the last moments. The sense of interconnectedness with them stands out vividly by way of contrast at the very moment when our mortal connection with them is about to be dissolved. And the intertwining of our life with theirs, the living in the life that is in them, is but a part of our living in the infinite manifold of the spiritual life. The thought of this, as apprehended, not in terms of knowledge, but in immediate experience, begets the peace that passeth understanding. And it is upon the bosom of that peace that we can pass safely out of the realm of time and space." - Felix Adler
"The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet." - Felix Adler
"Theologians often say that faith must come first, and that morality must be deduced from faith. We say that morality must come first, and faith, to those whose nature fits them to entertain it, will come out of the experience of a deepened moral life as its richest, choicest fruit. Precisely because moral culture is the aim, we cannot be content merely to lift the mass of mankind above the grosser forms of evil. We must try to advance the cause of humanity by developing in ourselves, as well as in others, a higher type of manhood and womanhood than the past has known. To aid in the evolution of a new conscience, to inject living streams of moral force into the dry veins of materialistic communities is our aim. We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them." - Felix Adler
"I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music." - Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
"All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Christendom may be defined briefly as that part of the world in which, if a man stands up in public and swears with any show of earnestness that he is a Christian, all his auditors will laugh." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Never was a mewing cat a good mouser." - Italian Proverbs
"One can't enter Paradise in spite of the saints." - Italian Proverbs
"One should learn to sail in all winds." - Italian Proverbs
"One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds." - Italian Proverbs
"Still water breeds vermin." - Italian Proverbs
"Take down a thief from the gallows and he will hang you up." - Italian Proverbs
"The difficult thing is to get foot in the stirrup." - Italian Proverbs
"The sun loses nothing by shining into a puddle." - Italian Proverbs
"When all men say you are an ass it is time to bray." - Italian Proverbs
"The wisdom of one generation will be the folly of the next." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"For we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"GANDALF: Confound it all, Samwise Gamgee. Have you been eavesdropping? SAM: I ain't been droppin' no eaves sir, honest. I was just cutting the grass under the window there, if you'll follow me. GANDALF: A little late for trimming the verge, don't you think? SAM: I heard raised voices. GANDALF: What did you hear? Speak. SAM: N-nothing important. That is, I heard a good deal about a ring, and a Dark Lord, and something about the end of the world, but... Please, Mr. Gandalf, sir, don't hurt me. Don't turn me into anything... unnatural." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"He did not know it, but Arwen Und¢miel was also there, dwelling again for a time with the kin of her mother. She was little changed, for the mortal years had passed her by, yet her face was more grave, and her laughter now seldom was heard. But Aragorn was grown to full stature of body and mind, and Galadriel bade him cast aside his wayworn raiment, and she clothed him in silver and white, with a cloak of elven-grey and a bright gem on his brow. Then more than any kind of Men he appeared, and seemed rather an Elf-lord from the Isles of the West. And thus it was that Arwen first beheld him again after their long parting; and as he came walking towards her under the trees of Caras Galadhon laden with flowers of gold, her choice was made and her doom appointed." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"He led the way in under the huge branches of the trees. Old beyond guessing, they seemed. Great trailing beards of lichen hung from them, blowing and swaying in the breeze. Out of the shadows, the hobbits peeped, gazing back down the slope: little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien