This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
To-day the houses seemed taller and farther apart; the street wider and full of bright, clear light that cast no shadows and was never sunshine. Under archways and between the houses the distances had a curious transparency, as though they had been painted upon glass. Against the luminous and indeterminate sky the Abbey tower rose distinct and delicate.
Indifference | Life | Life | Time | Unconsciousness | Friendship |
Each time I think of the essential, I seem to glimpse it in silence or explosion, in stupor or exclamation. Never in speech.
Indifference | Regret | Universe | Will |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
The solitude of the subject results from its relationship with the existing over which it is master. This mastery over existing is the power of beginning, of starting out from itself, starting out from itself neither to act nor to think, but to be.
Events | Good | Kindness | Little | Man | Organization | Politics | Utopia |
So the youngsters have a high level of physical activity throughout their school years. School groups often go on expeditions: itÂ’s common to see six-year-olds, with heavy backpacks, trudging along with older kids on hikes which Â… may last four or five days, and in quite forbidding country. As they move on into higher levels of school Â… much of the childrenÂ’s time is allotted to training in fishing and hunting and survival skills, at the expense of basic educational skills. They are forced to learn not only the basic techniques but also how to improvise ecologically acceptable equipment in the wild: hooks, snares, bows, arrows, and so on. Â… The experiences of the children are closely tied in with studies of plants, animals, and landscape.
Politics |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream. The water of the Stream was usually a dark blue when you looked out at it when there was no wind. But when you walked out into it there was just the green light of the water over that floury white sand and you could see the shadow of any big fish a long time before he could ever come in close to the beach. It was a safe and fine place to bathe in the day but it was no place to swim at night. At night the sharks came in close to the beach, hunting at the edge of the Stream, and from the upper porch of the house on quiet nights you could hear the splashing of the fish they hunted and if you went down to the beach you could see the phosphorescent wakes they made in the water. At night the sharks had no fear and everything else feared them. But in the day they stayed out away from the clear white sand and if they did come in you could see their shadows a long way away.
Politics |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.
Books | Boys | Government | Hope | Man | Politics | Will | Government |
My love for the alphabet, which endures, grew out of reciting it but, before that, out of seeing the letters on the page. In my own story books, before I could read them for myself I fell in love with various winding, enchanted-looking initials drawn by Walter Crane at the head of fairy tales. In Once upon a time, an o had a rabbit running it as a treadmill, his feet upon flowers. When the day came years later for me to see the Book of Kells, all the wizardry of letter, initial, and word swept over me a thousand times, and the illumination, the gold, seemed a part of the world's beauty and holiness that had been there from the start.
Indifference | Passion |
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.
Politics |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
Obsession | Politics | Understand |
I fell, giving the arm at least a million stairs | and now you're not there is a vacuum at each step .
Indifference | Lord |
Revenge a hundred years old has still its milk-teeth.