This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
He who within his breast meditates a crime has all the guilt of the deed.
George Savile, fully Sir George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue when men have it whether they will or not.
Character | Crime | Men | Popularity | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
A moral decision is the loneliest thing that exists. Knowledge is shed abroad everywhere. Anybody may dip his cup into that great sea and take out what he can. It is a public appropriation from a public store. But what the man himself must do as a moral being, what ordering he shall make of his life, what allegiance he shall choose, what cause he shall cleave to - this is decided in that solitude where his soul in authentic presence lives with no other companion than the Final Authority which he recognizes as supreme.
Authority | Cause | Character | Decision | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Public | Solitude | Soul |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: there is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die.