This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged." - Euripedes NULL
"Neither earth nor ocean produces a creature as savage and monstrous as woman." - Euripedes NULL
"Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them." - Euripedes NULL
"When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury, like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will." - Euripedes NULL
"Ælian, in his account of Zoilus, the pretended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems, the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which, if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have starved his beard." - Eustace Budgell
"Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves." - Eustace Budgell
"I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign of King James the First." - Eustace Budgell
"There is something so gross in the carriage of some wives that they lose their husbandsÂ’ hearts for faults which, if a man has either good-nature or good-breeding, he knows not how to tell them of. I am afraid, indeed, the ladies are generally most faulty in this particular; who at their first giving into love find the way so smooth and pleasant that they fancy it is scarce possible to be tired in it. There is so much nicety and discretion required to keep love alive after marriage, and make conversation still new and agreeable after twenty or thirty years, that I know nothing which seems readily to promote it but an earnest endeavor to please on both sides, and superior good sense on the part of the man." - Eustace Budgell
"The thing about playing percussion is that you can create all these emotions that can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes really ugly, or sometimes sweet, sometimes as big as King Kong and so on. And so there can be a real riot out there, or it can be so refined." - Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie
"As the beautiful does not exist for the artist and poet alone—though these can find in it more poignant depths of meaning than other men—so the world of Reality exists for all; and all may participate in it, unite with it, according to their measure and to the strength and purity of their desire." - Evelyn Underhill
"Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"I have been here before, I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendor, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Old boy, said Grimes, you're in love. Nonsense! Smitten? said Grimes. No, no. The tender passion? No. Cupid's jolly little darts? No. Spring fancies, love's young dream? Nonsense! Not even a quickening of the pulse? No. A sweet despair? Certainly not. A trembling hope? No. A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi? Nothing of the sort. Liar! said Grimes." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"And so this great nation has come into being under the inspiration of the Almighty to accomplish his purposes. Through modern revelation we have had made very plain to us something of the mission of America and the establishment of our national Constitution." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Do not rationalize your acceptance of government gratuities by saying, “I am a contributing taxpayer too.” By doing this you contribute to the problem which is leading this nation to financial insolvency." - Ezra Taft Benson
"I reverence the Constitution of the United States as a sacred document. To me its words are akin to the revelations of God, for God has placed His stamp of approval on the Constitution of this land. I testify that the God of Heaven sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government, and He has sent other choice spirits — even you who read my words — to preserve it." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The Founding Fathers understood the principle that “righteousness exalteth a nation”, and helped to bring about one of the greatest systems ever used to govern men. But unless we continue to seek righteousness and preserve the liberties entrusted to us, we shall lose the blessings of heaven. Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” The price of freedom is also to live in accordance with the commandments of God. The early Founding Fathers thanked the Lord for His intervention in their behalf. They saw His hand in their victories in battle and believed strongly that He watched over them." - Ezra Taft Benson
"You must keep your honor. You cannot yet speak officially for the country, but you can become informed. You can speak your mind. You may think you can do little about the national economy or the actions of our government and the moral weakness all about us, but we must all remember that the Lord has placed great responsibilities upon the elders of Israel in the preservation of our Constitution." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss of humanity." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Pathology would remain a lovely science, even if there were no therapeutics, just as seismology is a lovely science, though no one knows how to stop earthquakes." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"On every small pretext the wolf seizes the sheep." - Italian Proverbs
"One good morsel and a hundred vexations." - Italian Proverbs
"The sound of the bell does not drive away rooks." - Italian Proverbs
"What shall I say when it is better to say nothing?" - Italian Proverbs
"What the eye sees not the heart rues not." - Italian Proverbs
"Where there's a will there's a way." - Italian Proverbs
"I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. 'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off)." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazg–l, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien