This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brannhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Sad is Eros, builder of cities, and weeping anarchic Aphrodite. [in memory of Sigmund Freud]
But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
Expectation | Right | Expectation | Old |
A good title should be like a good metaphor: it should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Expectation | Good | Expectation |
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
But after all I find in my work an echo of what struck me. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand. In my shorthand there may be words that cannot be deciphered. There may be mistakes or gap
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
Some good must come by clinging to the right. Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction.
Fate | Good | Mind | Service | Study | Unfaithfulness | Fate | Friendship | Think |
Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
Ability in a man is knowledge which emanates from divine light.
Expectation | Peace | Expectation | Happiness |
My anxiety is over. The Guru has cut away my bonds, and I have found eternal peace. Whatever shall be, shall be in the end; so where can pain and pleasure be seen?
Peace | Prosperity | Happiness |
You, the aspirant for supreme mind, progeny, fortune and wealth... acting in accordance with your husband's wishes, happily pave your way towards immortality.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.
Capacity | Competition | Good | Guilt | Joy | Will | Work | Child |
If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |
To err is human, there is none who has not erred some time or other.
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
If skill could be gained by watching, every dog would become a butcher.
Love |
As yet, we Americans have hardly begun to think of the details of execution in any art. We do not aim at perfection of detail even in engineering, much less in literature. In the haste of our national life, most of our intellectual work is done at a rush, is something inserted in the odd moments of the engrossing pursuit. The popular preacher becomes a novelist; the editor turns his paste-pot and scissors to the compilation of a history; the same man must be poet, wit, philanthropist, and genealogist. We find a sort of pleasure in seeing this variety of effort, just as the bystanders like to see a street-musician adjust every joint in his body to a separate instrument, and play a concerted piece with the whole of himself. To be sure, he plays each part badly, but it is such a wonder he should play them all! Thus, in our rather hurried and helter-skelter training, the man is brilliant, perhaps; his main work is well done; but his secondary work is slurred. The book sells, no doubt, by reason of the author’s popularity in other fields; it is only the tone of our national literature that suffers. There is nothing in American life that can make concentration cease to be a virtue. Let a man choose his pursuit, and make all else count for recreation only. Goethe’s advice to Eckermann is infinitely more important here than it ever was in Germany: “Beware of dissipating your power; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.”
Daring | Emotions | Expectation | Intuition | Language | Life | Life | Passion | Sound | Expectation |
Compassion is an emotion of which we ought never to be ashamed. Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe. We should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in a selfish enjoyment; but we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human, life, of the solitary cottage; the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. Hugh Blair
Timothy Dwight, fully Timothy Dwight IV
What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!
Education | Existence | Government | Industry | Learning | Man | Marriage | Refinement | World | Government |
The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred … Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expence of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my", to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?