This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The question was whether an ape which was being used to develop a poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence, it could not enter into the world of man, i.e., the only world in which the meaning of its suffering would be understandable. Then I pushed forward with the following question: ‘And what about man? Are you sure that the the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising." - Václav Havel
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
"Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you? It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
"Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him." - William Godwin
"No human being ever learns to live until he has awakened to the dormant powers within him" - William James
"Speak but one word to me over the corn, over the tender, bowed locks of the corn." - William Morris
"The system of life on this planet is so astoundingly complex that it was a long time before man even realized that it was a system at all and that it wasn't something that was just there." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.†the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly." - Dugald Stewart
"A word has its use, Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave." - Edwin Arlington Robinson
"When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the people of Tibet will be scattered like ants across the world and the dharma will come to the land of the red man." - Padmasambhava, literally "Lotus-Born",aka "Second Buddha", better known as Guru Rinpoche (lit. "Precious Guru") or Lopon Rinpoche NULL
"Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion." - Edwin Percy Whipple
"That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things." - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
"My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament." - Emile Zola
"It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!" - Emile Zola
"The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg." - Emile Zola
"The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it." - Emile Zola
"He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Only two pointed arrows betrayal of violence is similar to injure users of worse enemies." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"Teaching is leaving a vestige of one self in the development of another. And surely the student is a bank where you can deposit your most precious treasures. " - Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
"Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"I will be an artist or nothing!" - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"One does nothing who tries to console a despondent person with word. A friend is one who aids with deeds at a critical time when deeds are called for." - Euripedes NULL
"Fit for kings, formal gardens afford an earthly Elysium and the odd impression that we mere men might actually control nature for a time." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books." - Gustave Flaubert
"Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane