This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We had more fun waiting in line together at the Department of Motor Vehicles than most couples have on their honeymoons. We gave each other same nickname, so there would be no separation between us. We made goals, vows, promises and dinner together. He read books to me...
There's a power struggle going on across Europe these days. A few cities are competing against each other to see who shall emerge as the great 21st century European metropolis. Will it be London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn't compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this city, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.
The other night we talked about the terms we use while let us take comfort someone desperate. I told him in English, sometimes we say, Been there. I explained to him that the deep sadness as a specific place, with its coordinates on the map of time. When you find yourself in that forest of sorrow, you can not imagine you'll ever find a way to a better place. But, if someone fails to convince that he was in the same place, but it has left, it can sometimes bring hope.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks, held out in the smoke, like stars by day.
The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end.
All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, the matchless tinting on the royal rose whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, these hold a deeper pathos than our woes, since they leave nothing better to expect.
Day | Fate | Love | Play | Sorrow | Yielding | Fate | Friendship |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Unlike we are, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies... Thou, bethink thee, art a guest for queens to social pageantries, with gages from a hundred brighter eyes than tears even can make mine... what hast though to do with looking from the lattice-lights at me, a poor, tired, wandering singer.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!
I have been into many of the ancient cathedrals - grand, wonderful, mysterious. But I always leave them with a feeling of indignation because of the generations of human beings who have struggled in poverty to build these altars to an unknown god.
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
I have had good experience and trial of this world...I know what it is to be a subject, what to be a sovereign, what to have good neighbors, and sometimes meet evil willers. I have found treason in trust, seen great benefits little regarded.
The longer I live and the more I see of the struggle of souls toward the heights above, the stronger this truth comes home to me: that the Universe rests on the shoulders of love; a love so limitless, deep, and broad, that men have renamed it and called it--God.
I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, one year to the next.
To me, the raveled sleeve of care is never more painlessly knitted up than in an evening alone in a chair snug yet copious, with a good light and an easily held little volume sloppily printed and bound in inexpensive paper. I do not ask much of it - which is just as well, for that is all I get. It does not matter if I guess the killer, and if I happen to discover, along around page 208, that I have read the work before, I attribute the fact not to the less than arresting powers of the author, but to my own lazy memory. I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours. In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Whodunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people.
Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
The pathos of life is worse than the tragedy.
A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of this talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity.
The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, sold consciences, bought women, and rampant drunkenness.
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