This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I'm not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don't. Move on and move out.
Argument | Pleasure | Relationship |
The new man is born too old to tolerate the new world. The present conditions of life have not yet erased the traces of the past. We run too fast, but we still do not move enough. He looks but he does not contemplate, he sees but he does not think. He runs away from time, which is made of thought, and yet all he can feel is his own time, the present.
Individual | Life | Life | Solitude |
But you have to go to the East to understand what the religion . I really understood the religious sentiment only there; religions is the true home of the East. And, after all, Catholicism is an Eastern religion, which has spread everywhere, but perhaps only the spirit of those countries can assimilate and accept it totally.
Joy |
There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one.
When a wise man chooses a sane basis for his arguments, it is no great task to speak well.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Pleasure |
Many a congregation when it assembles in church must look to the angels like a muddy, puddly shore at low tide; littered with every kind of rubbish and odds and ends --a distressing sort of spectacle. And then the tide of worship comes in, and it's all gone: the dead sea-urchins and jelly-fish, the paper and the empty cans and the nameless bits of rubbish. The cleansing sea flows over the whole lot. So we are released from a narrow, selfish outlook on the universe by a common act of worship. Our little human affairs are reduced to their proper proportion when seen over against the spaceless Majesty and Beauty of God.
If , then, we desire a simple test of the quality of our spiritual life, a consideration of the tranquility, gentleness and strength with which we deal with the circumstances of our outward life will serve us better than anything that is based on the loftiness of our religious notions, or fervor of our religious feelings.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.
Joy |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Of course those that have charm don't really need brains.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with log-like calm.
Better | Despondency | Pleasure | World |
Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie
I think I can only help to expose percussion to all sorts of people. The balance between the lighter and more serious side is important.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas' 'Did you?' 'I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign, isn't it?
Pleasure |
It is not possible to enter into the nature of the Good by standing aloof from it — by merely speculating upon it. Act the Good, and you will believe in it. Throw yourself into the stream of the world's good tendency and you will feel the force of the current and the direction in which it is setting. The conviction that the world is moving toward great ends of progress will come surely to him who is himself engaged in the work of progress.
I believe one of the most serious mistakes a President could make would be to weaken the Constitution. From the time I was a small boy I was taught that the American Constitution is an inspired document. I was also taught that the day will come when the Constitution will be endangered and hang as it were by a single thread. I was taught that we should study the Constitution. . . . I expect to continue my efforts to help protect and safeguard our inspired Constitution.