This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The conversation flagged. Madame Bovary frequently relapsed into silence, while Leon himself seemed ill at ease. He was seated on a low chair near the fire, and kept turning over the ivory needle-case in his fingers. She plied her needle, pressing down the hem of the cloth from time to time with her nail. She did not speak, and he too held his peace, just as entranced by her silence as he would have been by her words.
People |
So far as Emma was pertaining concerned About did not she ask herself Whether she was in love. Love, she thought, was something That must come Suddenly, with a great display of thunder and lightning, descending on one's life like a tempest from above, turning it topsy-turvy, whirling away one's resolutions like leaves and bearing one onward, heart and soul: towards the abyss. She never bethought herself how on the terrace of a house forms the rain Itself into little lakes When the gutters are choked, and she was going on quite unaware of her peril, When all of a sudden she Discovered - a crack in the wall!
Man |
She only cared for the sea when it was lashed to fury by the storm and for verdure when it served as a background to a ruin. Everything must needs minister to her personal longings, as it were, and she thrust aside as of no account whatever everything that did not immediately contribute to stir the emotions of her heart, for her temperament was sentimental rather than artistic, seeking, not pictures, but emotions.
Man |
She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.
Man |
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
People | Punishment |
The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of--I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters--I live and breathe them.
When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don't let anyone persuade you to say it.
Man |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.
Individual | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
People | Popularity |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I, but the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
People |
It is my observation that too many of us are spending money we haven't earned to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like.
Man |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.
People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air?that progress made under the shadow of the policeman?s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave? In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen? I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.
Creativity | Energy | Enthusiasm | Freedom | Good | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
Controversy | Love | People |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
People |