This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.
Imagination | Power |
The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, since the imperfect is so hot in us, lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
In what camera do you taste poison, in what darkness set glittering scales and point the tipping tongue?
Imagination | World |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The reflection of nature in man’s thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.
Enthusiasm | People | Slavery |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
Imagination | Precision | Precision |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Paduk and all the rest wrote on steadily, but Krug's failure was complete, a baffling and hideous disaster, for he had been busy becoming an elderly man instead of learning the simple but now unobtainable passages which they, mere boys, had memorized.
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and of strength to be derived by unity.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.
Enthusiasm | God | Heaven | Law | Man | Reading | Spirit | God |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
Books | Imagination | Light |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Good | Imagination | Knowledge | Taste |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot.
Beauty | Imagination | Means | Men | Soul | Thought | World | Beauty | Old | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.
Battle | Birth | Children | History | Imagination | Life | Life | Longing | Majority | Meaning | Men | Nothing | Talking | Thought | Will | Old | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
Excitement | Imagination | Thought | Time | Witness | Thought |
Intolerance is to be found even among philosophers, and censorship even among democrats.
Imagination | Memory |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, I am here--I am here--I am life, eternal life.'
Desolation | Existence | Imagination | Important | Life | Life | Memory | Mind | Past | Poverty | Spirit | World |