This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage is closed and done. From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells; but I with mournful tread walk the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
Dignity | Individual | Law | Liberty | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Wise |
There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodopè! that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.
Absence and death are the same -- only that in death there is no suffering.
Its massive height near the City of Heaven joins a thousand mountains to the corner of the sea. Clouds, when I look back, close behind me, mists, when I enter them, are gone. A central peak divides the wilds and weather into many valleys... Needing a place to spend the night, I call to a wood-cutter over the river.
Day | Devotion | Doubt | Gold | Happy | Life | Life | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wise |
The worse of ingratitude lies not in the ossified heart of him who commits it, but we find it in the effect it produces on him against whom it was committed.
Wise |
I should entertain a mean opinion of myself if all men, or the most part, praised and admired me; it would prove me to be somewhat like them.
Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language.
Wise |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
Action | Capacity | Energy | Intention | Reality | Wise | Leadership |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
What you really want a course on investing is, how to value a business. That’s what the game is about.
Wise |
Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
A man who is seeking for realization is not only going round searching for his spectacles without realizing that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The task of the Christian emperors in combating magic was, in truth, one of the most difficult that can be conceived; and all the penalties that Roman barbarity could devise, were unable to destroy practices which were the natural consequence of the prevailing credulity. As long as men believed that they could easily ascertain the future, it was quite certain that curiosity would at length overpower fear. As long as they believed that a few simple rites could baffle their enemies, and enable them to achieve their most cherished desires, they would most unquestionably continue to practice them. Priests might fulminate their anathemas, and emperors multiply their penalties; but skepticism, and not terrorism, was the one corrective for the evil. This skepticism was nowhere to be found. The populace never questioned for a moment the efficacy of magic.
Wise |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
It was left by Aristoxenus, who with great ability and labour classified and arranged in it the different modes. In accordance with it, and by giving heed to these theories, one can easily bring a theatre to perfection, from the point of view of the nature of the voice, so as to give pleasure to the audience.
Posterity | Refinement | Wise |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation between people.
Anarchy | Government | Wise | Government |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
A wonderful point in favor of some kind of hereafter is this: When the mind rejects as childishly absurd a paradise with musical angels or abstract colonnades with Horace and Milton in togas conversing and walking together through the eternal twilight, or the protracted voluptas of the orient or any other eternity -- such as the one with devils and porcupines -- we forget that if we could have imagined life before living it would have seemed more improbable than all our hereafters
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.
Experience | Wise | Learn |