This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Yet, so strong is the hold which the insidious evil of Communism secures upon its disciples, that I could still say to someone at that time: I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.
Daughter | Experience | Father | Logic | Myth | Question | Reason | Soul | Vision | Will | Child |
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.
Battle | Daughter | Faith | Marriage | Poetry | Prowess | Rites | Satire | Surrender |
It [the grave] buries every error—covers every defect—extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave of an enemy and not feel a compunctious throb that he should have warred with the poor handful of dust that lies moldering before him?
Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even better.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Well, I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity: People doing stupid things without realizing or, instead, thinking they were doing good.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Camila was quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, or her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself.
Daughter | Dignity | Distinction | Time | Old |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men's. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.
Belief | Custom | Daughter | Dread | Enough | Heaven | Ideas | Knowledge | Little | Love | Passion | People | Shame | Sincerity | World |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
Children | Contemplation | Daughter | Death | Inevitable | Regard | Youth | Youth | Contemplation | Think |
And it is great to do that thing that ends all other deeds, which shackles accidents, and bolts up change. Antony and Cleopatra, Act v, Scene 2
O hearken the words of his voice of compassion: "come cling round about me, ye faithful who sicken of the weary unrest and the world's passing fashions! As the rain in mid-morning your troubles shall thicken, but surely within you some godhead doth quicken, as ye cry to me heeding, and leading you home."