This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
This was the very limit beyond which none of them had ever speculated, or even known that there was any speculation to be done.
Day | Determination | Life | Life | Problems | Thought | Work | Thought |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.
Earth | Feelings | Imagination | People | Thinking | Thought | Parent | Thought |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The room was not a room to elevate the soul. Louis XIV, to pick a name at random, would not have liked it, would have found it not sunny enough, and insufficiently full of mirrors. He would have desired someone to pick up the socks, put the records away, and maybe burn the place down. Michelangelo would have been distressed by its proportions, which were neither lofty nor shaped by any noticeable inner harmony or symmetry, other than that all parts of the room were pretty much equally full of old coffee mugs, shoes and brimming ashtrays, most of which were sharing their tasks with each other. The walls were painted in almost precisely that shade of green which Rafaello Sanzio would have bitten off his own right hand at the wrist rather than use, and Hercules, on seeing the room, would probably have returned half an hour later armed with a navigable river.
Books | Evolution | Life | Life | Little | Thought | Thought |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.
The challenge of reporting is to continually come up with new information on the issues on which you’re reporting. This can be extremely difficult if not impossible when dealing with sudden emergencies. Most terrorist attacks fit this pattern. Initially, the media is blindsided by the event. Eyewitness reports start coming in, the vast majority of which are inaccurate. Media outlets don’t have the option to remain silent about breaking news, so having nothing else to talk about, they repeat the rumors. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that people take rumor as fact from mainstream news outlets, or they do realize it but feel they have plausible deniability by reporting rumors as rumor rather than fact.
Government | Right | Thought | Government | Thought |
We seldom find persons whom we acknowledge to be possessed of good sense, except those who agree with us in opinion.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies in plants, herbs, stones, and their true quantities; for naught so vile that on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good doth give; nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
PRINCE HAL: Why, thou owest God a death. FALSTAFF: 'Tis not due yet, I would be loath to pay him before his day.
ORLANDO: Who stays it still withal? ROSALIND: With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.
O, these deliberate fools, when they do choose, they have the wisdom by their wit to lose.
It has become a conviction with me that psychology may in the long run do much to change the conception of the fundamental nature of the religious life, which, on the whole, is now too generally made a matter of doctrine. It is too intellectual At the doors of most churches one is met by required beliefs in a particular conception of God, in a speculative theory about the divinity of Christ, definite ideas concerning sin and salvation, the efficacy of ordinances, and the claims of supernatural revelation. What people are really seeking is access to refreshing fountains of life, sources of strength and guidance. They crave association with people and institutions which may convey to them a sense of what is most worthwhile in life and what may furnish impulsion toward real and enduring values. They know pretty well what those values are when allowed to let their own deepest desires express themselves.
Beginning | Divinity | Excitement | History | Meaning | Metaphysics | Philosophy | Revelation | Science | Temper | Theology | Thought | Work | Thought |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed.
Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly MahÄyÄna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly HÄ«nayÄna. These are temples where only the HÄ«nayÄna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the MahÄyÄna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [HÄ«nayÄna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [MahÄyÄna and HÄ«nayÄna] practices are carried out.
Man | Object | People | Thought | Time | Waiting | Wrong | Child | Thought |
Of all the know-nothing persons in this world, commend us to the man who has "never known a day's illness." He is a moral dunce, one who has lost the greatest lesson of life; who has skipped the finest lecture in that great school of humanity, the sick-chamber.
It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Enough | Genius | Men | Nations | Thought | Govern | Thought |