This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Let the stone be taken from the quarry two years before building is to begin, and not in winter, but in summer. Then let it lie exposed in an open place. Such stone as been damaged by the two years of exposure should be used in the foundations. The rest, which remains unhurt, has passed the test of nature and will endure in those parts of the building which are above ground.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
There are three departments of architecture: the art of building, the making of time-pieces, and the construction of machinery.
Giving | Peculiarity |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the “strong” sex than all the advanced, enlightened, “democratic” republics of the world did in the course of 130 years.
Beginning | Giving | Objectives | Teach |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence, uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at the moment of intimacy, this is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then, Mrs. Ramsay may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this silence by her side) by saying them?
Giving |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
That she held herself well was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well, considering that she spent little. But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch picture), this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing - nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway, not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.
Anger | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Necessity | Pain | Size | Writing |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
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 of June.
Giving | Past | Sense | Simplicity |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
With my cheek leant upon the window pane I like to fancy that I am pressing as closely as can be upon the massy wall of time, which is forever lifting and pulling and letting fresh spaces of life in upon us. May it be mine to taste the moment before it has spread itself over the rest of the world! Let me taste the newest and the freshest.
Giving |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Study carefully the law of cause and effect.
One day, in the course of that winter, the sun had come out for a while in the afternoon, but it was the second of February, that ancient Candlmas-day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of six weeks of cold, inspired Matthew Laensberg with the two lines, which have deservedly become classic: Let it gleam or let it glimmer, the bear goes back into his cave.
Events | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Thought | World | Thought |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logotherapy? he asked. At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logotherapy? Yes, I said, but in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is? This was his answer: During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell. Whereupon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation: Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear.
Cause | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Reason | World |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Our attitude towards what has happened to us in life is the important thing to recognize. Once hopeless, my life is now hope-full, but it did not happen overnight. The last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one's own way.
Giving |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Death | Enjoyment | Existence | Fate | Fulfillment | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Fate |