This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again—it is hers yet—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it...
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code; so there are, as a rule, two copies of the latter in the fertilized egg cell, which forms the earliest stage of the future individual. In calling the structure of the chromosome fibres a code-script we mean that the all-penetrating mind, once conceived by Laplace, to which every causal connection lay immediately open, could tell from their structure whether the egg would develop, under suitable conditions, into a black cock or into a speckled hen, into a fly or a maize plant, a rhododendron, a beetle, a mouse or a woman. To which we may add, that the appearances of the egg cells are very often remarkably similar; and even when they are not, as in the case of the comparatively gigantic eggs of birds and reptiles, the difference is not so much in the relevant structures as in the nutritive material which in these cases is added for obvious reasons. But the term code-script is, of course, too narrow. The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power, or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder's craft-in one.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Thus the same statement that guarantees that God exists and that his most suitable name is He Who Is, also reveals to us the perfect simplicity of the divine essence. And indeed, God did not say: I am this or that, but simply I Am. I am what? I am ‘I Am.’ So, more than ever, the statement of Exodus seems to soar above in a kind of empty space, where the attraction of the weight of philosophy can no longer be felt. The work of reason is good, healthy, and important, for it proves that, left to itself, philosophy can establish with certitude the existence of the primary being whom everyone calls God. But a single word of the sacred text at once puts us in personal relations with him. We say his name, and by the simple fact of saying it, it teaches us the simplicity of the divine essence.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
He (a new philosopher) still needs to be taught, not this time philosophy, but to philosophize.
The moment you begin a serious study of the scriptures, you will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the straight and narrow path... When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you will find life in greater abundance.
Freedom | Illusion | Invention | Men | People | Rights | Work | Intellect |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
The jargon of sculptors is beyond me. I do not know precisely why I admire a green granite female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.
The impressions made on his mind by this kind of reading took such a hold of it that he felt a need within him of reproducing those pictures of bygone days. His ambition was to be, one day, the Walter Scott of France. Deslauriers dreamed of formulating a vast system of philosophy, which might have the most far-reaching applications.
Revenge |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Behind that, there was something else at work, beyond any design of the ring maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.