This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.
Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.
Force | Genius | Integration |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man’s love of power.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this -- and much more than this is true -- why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us--why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.
Age | Cleanliness | Extravagance | Genius |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess – he was a woman.
Genius | Good | Ideas | Immortality | Need | Rest | Story | Style | Will |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.
Acquaintance | Defects | Experience | Genius | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Novels | Play | Thought | Time | Woman | Words | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts if family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the led; if there was a draft she sat in it-- in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others... I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self defense. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
Affectation | Business | Famous | Genius | Good | Need | Posterity | Sincerity | Skill | Will | Business |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
Genius | Integrity | Life | Life | Light | Means | Mind | Nature | People | Thought | Thought |
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.
Genius | Happy | Revolution | Taste |
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
It is necessary to repent for years in order to efface a fault in the eyes of men; a single tear suffices with God.
History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal: to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.
The child’s murmuring is more and is less than words; there are no notes, and yet it is a song; there are no syllables, and yet it is language…. This poor stammering is a compound of what the child said when it was an angel, and of what it will say when it becomes a man.
There is a way of falling into error while on the way to truth.
Genius | Mediocrity | Sacred |
You can make no arrangements with destiny; tomorrow will not obey you.
Art | Genius | Nothing | Art | Understand |