This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
Love is so short, and forgetting so long.
We do not live to extenuate the miseries of the past nor to accept as incurable those of the present.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.
If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.
I do not evolve, I am. In art there is neither past nor future. Art that is not in the present will never be.
The function of art is no longer to satisfy wants, including intellectual wants, but to serve as a stimulus to further creation. The Sistine Chapel is valuable not for the feelings it aroused in the past but for the creative acts it will instigate in the future. Art comes into being through a chain of inspiration.
Art | Feelings | Future | Inspiration | Past | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Art |
The only thought in the world that is worth anything is free thought. To free thought we owe all past progress and all hope for the future. Since when has any one made it appear that shackled thought could get on better than that which is free? Brains are a great misfortune if one is never to use them.
Better | Future | Hope | Misfortune | Past | Progress | Thought | Wisdom | World | Worth | Misfortune | Thought |
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
The faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement. As it delights in presenting to the mind scenes and characters more perfect than those which we are acquainted with, it prevents us from ever being completely satisfied with our present condition, or with our past attainments, and engages us continually in the pursuit of some untried enjoyment, or of some ideal excellence. Destroy this faculty, and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes.
Destroy | Enjoyment | Excellence | Imagination | Improvement | Man | Mind | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |