This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fran Lebowitz, fully Frances Ann "Fran" Lebowitz
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
Talking |
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
Long talking begets short hearing, for people go away.
John Robert Seeley, fully Sir John Robert Seeley
A grain of real knowledge, of genuine controllable conviction, will outweigh a bushel of adroitness and to produce persuasion there is one golden principle of rhetoric not put down in the booksto understand what you are talking about
Persuasion | Rhetoric | Talking | Will | Understand |
Junius, psyeudonym of unknown English Political Writer NULL
Guilt is a poor, helpless, dependent being. Without the alliance of able, diligent, and let me add, fortunate fraud, it is inevitably undone. If the guilty culprit be obstinately silent, it forms a deadly presumption against him; if he speaks, talking tends only to his discovery, and his very defense often furnishes the materials for his conviction.
Defense | Presumption | Talking | Guilty |
Jules Feiffer, fully Jules Ralph Feiffer
Adults have their defense against time; it is called "responsibility," and once one assumes it he can transform his life into a set of routines which will account for all those hours when he is stale or tired. It is not size or age or childishness that separates children from adults. It is "responsibility." Adults come in all sizes, ages, and differing varieties of childishness, but as long as they have "responsibility" we recognize, often by the light gone out of their eyes, that they are what we call grownup. When grownups cope with "responsibility" for enough number of years they are retired from it. They are given, in exchange, a "leisure problem." They sit around with their "leisure problem" and try to figure out what to do with it. Sometimes they go crazy. Sometimes they get other jobs. Sometimes it gets too much for them and they die. They have been handed an undetermined future of nonresponsible time and they don't know what to do about it. And that is precisely the way it is with children. Time is the everpresent factor in their lives. It passes slowly or fast, always against their best interests: good time is over in a minute; bad time takes forever. Short on "responsibility," they are confronted with a "leisure problem."
Age | Children | Defense | Enough | Future | Good | Life | Life | Light | Size | Time | Will |
Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
Talking |
Lew Welch, fully Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr.
Living is made up of these little things - a day to day business punctuated with things seen, seen best when we weren't looking for them, or things that just happened to us while we were walking "dully along" and that we ought to notice these things. It is very easy to bandage the eyes and tell everyone that life is dull. But I am called odd by these people because I really don't think so. I try to make the day have a THING in it, and it usually does whether I try or not. And that makes the day. Period. But I am purposeless. I am talking of this far too seriously, but it rather hurts when I think that I was once very vulnerable to the charges that come my way. I have tried so damned hard to put a thing as simply as it appeared to me, and tried too damned hard not to let myself blow up a simple happening into a symbol of unrequited love but to leave it as it is. Shit.
Business | Day | Life | Life | Little | Love | People | Talking | Business | Think |
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, fully David Martyn Lloyd Jones
Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you.
Life | Life | Listening | Problems | Self | Talking | Unhappiness |
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches
We never change. Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions, or we're so slow about it that it's no use. We were born loyal and that's what killed us! Soldiers free of charge, heroes for everyone else, talking monkeys, tortured words, we are the minions of King Misery...It's not a life.
Talking |
Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz
I always tell our athletes, "The qualities you develop now, the things we're going to insist upon, will be with you for life, and they'll always be as sound and as good as they are now." All we're really talking about is a commitment to excellence.
Some men mistake talking about sense, for talking sense.
The notion of saving the planet has nothing to do with intellectual honesty or science. The fact is that the planet was here long before us and will be here long after us. The planet is running fine. What people are talking about is saving themselves and saving their middle-class lifestyles and saving their cash flow.
One of the basic causes for all the trouble in the world today is that people talk too much and think too little. They act too impulsively without thinking. I am not advocating in the slightest that we become mutes with our voices stilled because of fear of criticism of what we might say. That is moral cowardice. And moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. The importance of individual thinking to the preservation of our democracy and our freedom cannot be overemphasized. The broader sense of the concept of your role in the defense of democracy is that of the citizen doing his most for the preservation of democracy and peace by independent thinking, making that thinking articulate by translating it into action at the ballot boxes, in the forums, and in everyday life, and being constructive and positive in that thinking and articulation. The most precious thing that democracy gives to us is freedom. You and I cannot escape the fact that the ultimate responsibility for freedom is personal. Our freedoms today are not so much in danger because people are consciously trying to take them away from us as they are in danger because we forget to use them. Freedom unexercised may be freedom forfeited. The preservation of freedom is in the hands of the people themselves — not of the government.
Action | Cowardice | Criticism | Danger | Defense | Democracy | Fear | Freedom | Individual | Peace | People | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Thinking | World | Danger | Trouble | Think |
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Max DePree, alternatively De Pree or Depree
Leaders are walking and talking manuals of behavior. As we listen to them, we silently ask ourselves what they did last Friday morning when there was a problem. And we watch. And just as surely as financial people measure return on assets, we all measure the behavior of our leaders. We measure it against our ideals and our realities.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
The worship of god is thus symbolically manifested in a systematic summarization of mythological tradition (Überlieferung) and in obedience of solemn ritual habits ... The holiness (Heiligkeit) of incomprehensible deity is transferred to the holiness of comprehensible symbols ... A work of art has its meaning essentially in itself ... A religious symbol, on the contrary, points always above itself, its value is never exhausted in itself ... a winged angel was considered from ancient times to be the most beautiful symbol of god's servant and messenger. Nowadays we will find among anatomically educated believers some, which are prevented by their scientifically educated imagination from considering such physiological impossibility beautiful, despite their best efforts. This circumstance, however, does not cause the slightes harm to their religious attitudes ... But the overestimation of the importance of religious symbols is threatened still by another – much more serious – danger from the side of the movement of atheists (Gottlosenbewegung). One of the most favorite methods of this movement, aiming at undermining of every genuine religiosity, is to direct its attacks against traditional (alteingebürgerten) religious customs and ridiculing or dishonoring them as obsolete institutions. With such attacks against symbols they hope to hit the religion itself, and they have the easier task (Spiel) the stranger and more striking such views and customs look. Many a religious soul (religiöse Seele) has fallen pray to such a tactics. There is no better defense against such peril than to realize that religious symbol ... does never represent an abolute value but is always only a more or less imperfect reference to something higher which is not directly accessible to our senses.
Art | Better | Cause | Danger | Defense | God | Harm | Hope | Imagination | Impossibility | Meaning | Obedience | Peril | Religion | Soul | Tradition | Will | Work | Worship | Danger | Art | God | Value |