This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Speak against unconscious oppression, speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, speak against bonds." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping." - Faith Baldwin
"The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth." - Feisal Abdul Rauf
"It is not possible to enter into the nature of the Good by standing aloof from it — by merely speculating upon it. Act the Good, and you will believe in it. Throw yourself into the stream of the world's good tendency and you will feel the force of the current and the direction in which it is setting. The conviction that the world is moving toward great ends of progress will come surely to him who is himself engaged in the work of progress." - Felix Adler
"To-day, in the estimation of many, science and art are taking the place of religion. But science and art alike are inadequate to build up character and to furnish binding rules of conduct. We need also a clearer understanding of applied ethics, a better insight into the specific duties of life, a finer and a surer moral tact." - Felix Adler
"It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes." - Gustave Flaubert
"She turned away, her chin down and her brow well forward. The light shone on it as on a piece of marble, down to the curve of the eyebrows. But none could have told what Emma was looking at on the horizon, or what thoughts she was harboring deep down within her." - Gustave Flaubert
"The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame." - Gustave Flaubert
"Though she had no one to write to, she had bought herself a blotter, a writing case, a pen and envelopes; she would dust off her whatnot, look at herself in the mirror, take up a book, and then begin to daydream and let it fall to her lap? She wanted to die. And she wanted to live in Paris." - Gustave Flaubert
"We think of women at every age: while still children, we fondle with a na‹ve sensuality the breasts of those grown-up girls kissing us and cuddling us in their arms; at the age of ten, we dream of love; at fifteen, love comes along; at sixty, it is still with us, and if dead men in their tombs have any thought in their heads, it is how to make their way underground to the nearby grave, lift the shroud of the dear departed women, and mingle with her in her sleep" - Gustave Flaubert
"What could be better, really, than to sit by the fire in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the windowpanes, and the lamp burns?... You forget everything ... and hours go by. Without moving, you walk through lands you imagine you can see, and your thoughts, weaving in and out of the story, delight in the details or follow the outlines of the adventures. You merge with the character; you think you're the one whose heart is beating so hard within the clothes he's wearing." - Gustave Flaubert
"What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!" - Gustave Flaubert
"For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different." - Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra
"I am firmly convinced that poverty?this sub-human condition in which the majority of humanity lives today?is more than a social issue. Poverty poses a major challenge to every Christian conscience and therefore to theology as well. People today often talk about contextual theologies but, in point of fact, theology has always been contextual. Some theologies, it is true, may be more conscious of and explicit about their contextuality, but all theological investigation is necessarily carried out within a specific historical context. When Augustine wrote The City of God, he was reflecting on what it meant for him and for his contemporaries to live the Gospel within a specific context of serious historical transformations. Our context today is characterized by a glaring disparity between the rich and the poor. No serious Christian can quietly ignore this situation. It is no longer possible for someone to say, ?Well, I didn?t know? about the suffering of the poor. Poverty has a visibility today that it did not have in the past. The faces of the poor must now be confronted. And we also understand the causes of poverty and the conditions that perpetuate it. There was a time when poverty was considered to be an unavoidable fate, but such a view is no longer possible or responsible. Now we know that poverty is not simply a misfortune; it is an injustice." - Gustavo Gutiérrez
"All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Politicians seldom if ever get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged? Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can?t fulfill ? that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope?" - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Syllogisms … la Mode ? If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Thanksgiving Day: A day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that is not hydrophobia." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"We are frequently faced with the necessity of looking for the picture required for the visualization of an object, not in the perception of this particular object, but in a different perceptual image... we can assert the discrepancy between the perceived picture and the objective state. This discrepancy... proves absolutely nothing against the fact that all visualizations are merely sense qualities of the perceptual space... If the parallelism is... to be visualized, we must supplement our assertion by the description of certain qualities with which we are familiar from perceptual space." - Hans Reichenbach
"We must... maintain that mathematical geometry is not a science of space insofar as we understand by space a visual structure that can be filled with objects - it is a pure theory of manifolds." - Hans Reichenbach
"A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns." - Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
"Skill or fortune will efface the spots." - Italian Proverbs
"Sometimes the lees are better than the wine." - Italian Proverbs
"The buckets take to fighting with the well, and get their heads broken." - Italian Proverbs
"The lion had need of the mouse." - Italian Proverbs
"The thief's wife does not always laugh." - Italian Proverbs
"When a man has fallen into the mire, the more he flounders the more he fouls himself." - Italian Proverbs
"As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"The time has gone by when a Huxley could believe that while science might indeed remold traditional mythology, traditional morals were impregnable and sacrosanct to it. We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"Pray not too often for great favors, for we stand most in need of small ones." - J. L. Balsford
"And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And you, Ringbearer' she said, turning to Frodo. 'I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.' She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it and rays of white light sprang from her hand. 'In this phial,' she said,' is caught the light of Earendil's star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. Frodo took the phial, and for a moment as it shone between them, he saw her again standing like a queen, great and beautiful." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo?s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"But our path is laid.' 'Yes, that's so,' said Sam. 'And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before it started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually ? their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect that they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on - and not all at a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end; at least not to what folk inside a story it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same - like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into?' 'I wonder', said Frodo. 'But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in don't know. And you don't want them to." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Here ends the Silmarillion. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manw‰ and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien