This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
Absurd | Attention | Books | Earth | Evidence | Humanity | Important | Means | Oppression | Order | Paradise | Philosophy | Practice | Proletariat | Question | Reflection | Religion | Society | Struggle | Tomorrow | Unity | Will | Society | Old | Propaganda |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
When it appears that a work has been carried out sumptuously, the owner will be the person to be praised for the great outlay which he has authorized; when delicately, the master workmen will be approved for his execution; but when proportions and symmetry lend it an imposing effect, then the glory of it will belong to the architect.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Devices which in some curious new way imitate nature are attractive to simple minds.
Paradise |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Dostoevski is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one—with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with a halo of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation. His sweater, his peaked cap, his knee-guards, the gloves protruding from the hip pocket of his shorts, set him apart from the rest of the team. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender. Photographers, reverently bending one knee, snap him in the act of making a spectacular dive across the goal mouth to deflect with his fingertips a low, lightning-like shot, and the stadium roars in approval as he remains for a moment or two lying full length where he fell, his goal still intact.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I've had some experience of this love, this love that rules our hearts, which is the soul of our souls, all it got me was a kiss and twenty kicks in the ass. How could so beautiful to causes have produced in you such an abominable effect?
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed.
Paradise |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The women are never at a loss, God provides for them, let us run.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is misplaced if we agree with the lady's-maid that high birth is a form of congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.
Literature | Posterity |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For love… has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them.
And why is it that some men just can't deal with the idea that a smart, together, professional woman like me can actually deserve their respect and still want to be thrown down on the couch and pounded like a cheap steak now and then?
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Gvarab was old enough that she often wandered and maundered. Attendance at her lectures was small and uneven. She soon picked out the thin boy with big ears as her one constant auditor. She began to lecture for him. The light, steady, intelligent eyes met hers, steadied her, woke her, she flashed to brilliance, regained the vision lost. She soared, and the other students in the room looked up confused or startled, even scared if they had the wits to be scared. Gvarab saw a much larger universe than most people were capable of seeing, and it made them blink. The light-eyed boy watched her steadily. In his face she saw her joy. What she offered, what she had offered for a whole lifetime, what no one had ever shared with her, he shared. He was her brother, across the gulf of fifty years, and her redemption.
Good |
You can't run a water mill by carrying water. (Meaning: It is futile to start a business if you don't have a sustainable source or you can't sustain a life style with borrowed money.)
Paradise |
Ay, every inch a king: when I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life. — What was thy cause? — Adultery? — Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: the wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers. — Behold yond simpering dame, whose face between her forks presages snow; that minces virtue, and does shake the head to hear of pleasure's name; — the fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption! — fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee. King Lear, Act iv, Scene 6
Fear | Life | Life | Nature | Paradise | Spirit | Thought | Thought |
In cases where everything is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
Mind |
Constant you are, but yet a woman, and for secrecy, no lady closer, for I well believe thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, and so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate. Henry IV, Act ii, Scene 3
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
We are creatures of the moment we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.