This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail... No, you won't.' We will,' stated the robot simply. No, you won't. It makes my ship work.' In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail... You will not,' said Zaphod. And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.' Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?' No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.' Oh, yeah?' said Zaphod, waggling his gun. Yes,' said the robot, and they shot him. Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down.
Avarice is more opposite to economy than liberality.
It is necessary to form a distinct notion of what is meant by the word volition in order to understand the import of the word will; for this last word expresses the power of mind of which volition is the act.
Appearance | Conversation | Genius | Impression | Man | Memory | Observation | Opinion |
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Enough | Genius | Men | Nations | Thought | Govern | Thought |
Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann
We can never see the world other than incompletely: deliberately to see it as incomplete is to create an artistic aspect.
Experience | Genius | Knowing |
I'd like to go to Sicily because of what Goethe said: Without seeing Sicily, one can not have a clear idea of Italy .
Enough | Genius | Growth | Circumstance | Understand |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
But so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high. Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low. The universe's inward voices cry "Amen" to either song of joy and woe. Sing, seraph, poet! sing on equally!
Genius |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Let us... quietly accept our times, with the firm conviction that just as much good can be done today as at any time in the past, provided only that we have the will and the way to do it.
Exploit | Genius | Pleasure | Public | Temptation | Work | Talent | Temptation |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I we're pregnant with a rock.
Genius |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.
The idea of a poem European music and colorful had been in Bell , as well as instinct, a matter of culture, but some had been accompanied or preceded, in him, a practice some more 'inert and passive of the new isms found in air. Even futurism official had demanded, as the innovators of the century, to break the windows, to renew the air. Bell, however, had chosen the finest masters of those followed by his provisional initiators. Repudiated by instinct the more mechanical, more elencativa of liberalism fashion, and went, one can safely say this also in fact, to the most reliable sources of that movement, from Whitman toRimbaud . He reported on his own, in art and life, a matter of style in a matter of consciousness and was aware of representing, in his time and in its environment, a new voice, different.
Genius |