This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark's, theywere everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning. These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of a lifetime. These hours of afflatus in the human spirit, the springs of art, are, in their mystery, akin to the epochs of history, when a race which for centuries has lived content, unknown, behind its own frontiers, digging, eating, sleeping, begetting, doing what was requisite for survival and nothing else, will, for a generation or two, stupefy the world; commit all manner of crimes, perhaps; follow the wildest chimeras, go down in the end in agony, but leave behind a record of new heights scaled and new rewards won for all mankind; the vision fades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again. The human soul enjoys these rare, classic periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves -- the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleep-walker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outward eye. We get borne along, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a side street, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, out-distance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shall never share." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, "achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters."" - 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
"What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books." - Gustave Flaubert
"There is nothing more certain than a fact. To ignore it is to deceive and to be deceived and moreover to deprive oneself of the necessary means of truly and radically eliminating this condition ? that is, by moving toward a classless society.5" - Gustavo Gutiérrez
"Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"Instruction for life: Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk. When you lose, don't lose the lesson." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"I've learned that regardless of color or age, we all need about the same amount of love." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When a woman says she won't, it is a good sign that she will. And when she says she will it is an even better sign." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When difficulties confront him he no longer blames them upon the inscrutable enmity of remote and ineffable powers; he blames them upon his own ignorance and incompetence. And when he sets out to remedy that ignorance and to remove that incompetence he does not look to any such powers for light and leading; he puts his whole trust in his own enterprise and ingenuity. Not infrequently he overestimates his capacities and comes to grief, but his failures, at worst, are much fewer than the failures of his fathers. Does pestilence, on occasion, still baffle his medicine? Then it is surely less often than the pestilences of old baffled sacrifice and prayer. Does war remain to shame him before the bees, and wasteful and witless government to make him blush when he contemplates the ants? Then war at its most furious is still less cruel than Hell, and the harshest statutes ever devised by man have more equity and benevolence in them than the irrational and appalling jurisprudence of the Christian God." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one for life and one friend." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Whenever a woman begins to talk of anything, she is talking to, of, or at a man." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Imagination, devotion, perseverance, together with divine grace, will assure your success." - Haile Selassie
"The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle." - Hannah Arendt
"Health cannot be bought at the supermarket. You have to invest in health. You have to get kids into schooling. You have to train health staff. You have to educate the population." - Hans Rosling
"I have shown that Swedish top students know statistically significantly less about the world than the chimpanzees." - Hans Rosling
"The thief's wife does not always laugh." - Italian Proverbs
"The tongue goes to where the tooth aches." - Italian Proverbs
"The voice of the people is the voice of god." - Italian Proverbs
"The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending." - Italian Proverbs
"Too much prosperity makes most men fools." - Italian Proverbs
"When woman reigns the devil governs." - Italian Proverbs
"Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories are pernicious, the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connection between the minds of children and fairy-stories, of the same order as the connection between children's bodies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And Aragorn the King Elessar wedded Arwen Undomiel in the City of the Kings upon the day of Midsummer, and the tale of their long waiting and labors was come to fulfillment." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Arise, arise, Riders of Th‚oden! Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter! spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"As I lay in prison, Sam, I tried to remember the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton. But I can't see them now." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of L¢rien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. 'There at last when the Mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and Elanor and Niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea." - 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