This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Thank you, pretty pussy, was the death of my cat.
Death | Good | Hypothesis | Individual | Phenomena | Sense | Loss |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Being a cult figure in one's own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up: in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Life implies constant activity, and the vital principle was accordingly regarded as something essentially active, constantly controlling and therefore interfering with physical tendencies towards disintegration of organic structure, and building up new organic structure in the process of nutrition and reproduction.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose.
Death |