This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
And we have friends and no butlers.
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.
Wrong |
The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act So As To Elicit the Best In Others and Thereby In Thy Self. Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby oneself. Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby one's Self. Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby in yourself. Act so as to encourage the best in others and by so doing you will develop the best in yourself.
There is a great and crying evil in modern society. It is want of purpose. It is that narrowness of vision which shuts out the wider vistas of the soul. It is the absence of those sublime emotions which, wherever they arise, do not fall to exalt and consecrate existence.
Difficulty | Heart | Influence | Meaning | Men | Right | Understand |
I envision a style: a style That Would Be beautiful, that 'Will someone invent someday, ten years or ten centuries from now, One That Would Be as rhythmic verse, as the precise language of the sciences, undulant, deep-voiced as a cello, tipped with flame: a style That Would pierce your idea like a dagger, and your All which we thought Would Easily sail ahead over a smooth surface like a skiff before a good tail wind.
She fancied she saw him opposite at his window; then all grew confused: clouds passed before her, it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz beneath the light of the lustres on the arm of the Vicomte, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all this time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand caught in a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which invaded her soul.
Fame |
Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.
Right |
She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the legion of lyrical those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those whom she had love so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures, long dream of her youth was coming true. He remembered the heroines of novels she read and the lyrical legion of adulterous women those began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those whom she had love so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures, long dream of her youth was the coming true.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.
Individual | People |
You must - do you hear me, young man? - You must work more than you are doing!
Right |
You must not think that feeling is everything? Art is nothing without form.
Right |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In the superman Nietzsche gave the world the conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. Remained there but still a problem and it was this: When the Superman Appears at last on earth, what then? Will there be another super superman to follow and another super-superman after that? In the end, man will become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline after eating, with long return down the line, down through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space?
What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Body |
The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
Television | Wrong |