This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.
Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.
If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism.
Children | Despair | Evil | Happy | Pain | People | Praise | Treason | Trouble | Happiness |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
To possess taste, one must have some soul.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If you love life, the fear of death.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The war is not so expensive that bondage.
Practice | Usefulness | Virtue | Virtue |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Vice foments war; it is virtue which actually fights. If there were no virtue, we would live in peace forever.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
High place is quick to educate high minds.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We are almost always guilty of the hate we encounter.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It cannot be right if it is not human.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It is a pity that men cannot usually possess no talent without any desire to put others down.
Mediocrity | Praise |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
We must all wait and worry all the time and men.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Young people know love rather than beauty.