This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Men felt a chill in their hearts; a damp in their minds. In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth, one subterfuge was tried after another … sentences swelled, adjectives multiplied, lyrics became epics.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.
Deeds | Ends | Family | Land | Lying | Man | Memory | Need | Work | Deeds |
Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL
No stranger to misfortune myself, I have learned to relieve the sufferings of others.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
The reason a man must awaken is because it is dangerous to sleep, as man's present life proves.
Memory |
Intolerance is to be found even among philosophers, and censorship even among democrats.
Imagination | Memory |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, I am here--I am here--I am life, eternal life.'
Desolation | Existence | Imagination | Important | Life | Life | Memory | Mind | Past | Poverty | Spirit | World |
You may have huge hordes of men in the army; but they are useful only when the few Generals who lead them know where they are and whether they should proceed and how to overcome the enemy, whose strength and weakness they have comprehended. Hordes of people sing, recite, adore, worship, praise and prostrate, but these are the soldiers.
Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL
Vasana perishes through well conducted deliberation and truth. Through the absorption of Vasanas mind attains quiescence like a lamp without oil. - Mukti Upanishad
Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. this was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man, and offers him — in new clothing — his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
Experience | Memory | Nothing |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
Children | Dependence | Energy | Glory | Judgment | Love | Memory | Mind | Order | Success | Teach | Truth |
The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?
Association | Memory | Mind | Work | Association |
The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. The former is worse that the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation.
Attention | Good | Impression | Memory |
It seems unspeakably important that all persons among us, and especially the student and the writer, should be pervaded with Americanism. Americanism includes the faith that national self-government is not a chimera, but that, with whatever inconsistencies and drawbacks, we are steadily establishing it here. It includes the faith that to this good thing all other good things must in time be added. When a man is heartily imbued with such a national sentiment as this, it is as marrow in his bones and blood in his veins. He may still need culture, but he has the basis of all culture. He is entitled to an imperturbable patience and hopefulness, born of a living faith. All that is scanty in our intellectual attainments, or poor in our artistic life, may then be cheerfully endured: if a man sees his house steadily rising on sure foundations, he can wait or let his children wait for the cornice and the frieze. But if one happens to be born or bred in America without this wholesome confidence, there is no happiness for him; he has his alternative between being unhappy at home and unhappy abroad; it is a choice of martyrdoms for himself, and a certainty of martyrdom for his friends.
Affectation | Change | Choice | Enough | Literature | Little | Memory | Spirit | Wonder | Work | Poem |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.
Aptitude | Conscience | Contempt | Conversation | Freedom | Memory | Talent |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If death wants me, let him ride up on a pale mount, ashes in his mouth, ice in his testicles. Frankly, I do not like the way death does business.
Attention | Cause | Day | Death | Humor | Irony | Light | Memory | Religion | Sense | Thought | Will | Thought |