This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.
Crime | Guilt | Self-hatred | Sense | Soul |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
Even if one is neither vane nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
The guiding of man, the most variable and manifold of creatures, seems to me in very deed to be the art of arts and the science of sciences.
Body | Earth | God | Greatness | Spirit | Submission | Universe | God |
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
To impress the truth upon a soul when it is still fresh, like wax not yet subjected to the seal, is an easier task than inscribing pious doctrine on top of inscriptions—I mean wrong doctrines and dogmas—with the result that the former are confused and thrown into disorder by the latter.
Beauty | Distinguish | God | Greatness | Respect | Thinking | Respect | Beauty | God | Think |
You can't express inspiration without skill.
Daring | Individual | Life | Life | People |
Now what greater comfort is there than this, that there is one presides in the world who is so wise he cannot be mistaken, so faithful he cannot deceive, so pitiful he cannot neglect his people, and so powerful that he can make stones even to be turned into bread if he please!
The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.
When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
Conscience | Good | Guilt | Little |
Nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
Conscience | Guilt |
How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!
O my son! know thou that if the tail of the dog or the pig were ten cubits long it would not approach to the worth of the horse's even if it were like silk. O my boy! I thought that thou wouldst have been my heir at my death; and thou through thy envy and thy insolence didst desire to kill me. But the Lord delivered me from thy cunning.
In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.
Civilization | Daring | Diversity | Extreme | Influence | Liberty | Nothing | Present | Success | World | Intellect |
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
The conventional mind is at best a petty piece of machinery. It is oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so faintly, that the immediate contiguity of the vast is not disturbed. Nothing of the subtlety of life is perceived. No least inkling of its storms or terrors is ever discovered except through accident.
All for each, and each for all, is a good motto; but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others.
It's not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the doer of deeds might have done them better. Instead, the credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by sweat and blood and tears.
Courage | Daring | Efficiency | Evil | Idealism | Important | Justice | Love | Men | Nations | Need | Peace | Righteousness | Temper | Wisdom |