This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We can call the reflective element in the mind the reason, and the element with which it feels hunger and thirst, and the agitations of sex and other desires, the irrational appetite - an element closely connected with pleasure and satisfaction.
Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.
The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.
Appetite | Enthusiasm | Popularity | Science | Think |
Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism debauches true science and undermines the efforts of their own excellent science departments. The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudo-scientific charlatans. The public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason.
Appetite | Enough | Honesty | Need | Principles | Public | Science | Television | Truth | Universe | Wonder |
Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and disheveled desolation.
Appetite | Enough | People | Pleasure | Prosperity |
Conquer thyself. Till thou hast done that thou art a slave; for it is almost as well for thee to be in subjection to another's appetite as thy own.
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.
Appetite | Responsibility | Sense |
Abuse, even in the solid state are deaf mines that eventually burst.
Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
In passive joy the will finds itself rejoicing without any clear and direct understanding of the object of its joy.
Appetite | Desire | Soul | Understanding | Will | Understand |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Man does not choose of necessity... Consequently man wills Happiness of necessity, nor can he will not to be happy, or to be unhappy. Now since choice is not of the end, but of the means... it is not of the perfect good, which is Happiness, but of other particular goods. Therefore man chooses not of necessity but freely.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
In order to merit, it is enough to know that our merits do not suffice for us.
Abstinence | Appetite | Freedom | Soul |
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.
The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel.
The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.