This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What women would do if they could not cry, nobody knows. What poor, defenseless creatures they would be!
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth — when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass — the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another — particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke, and short of fish.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn't feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck anyway, and certainly not whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying.
Time |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
This man is the bee's knees, Arthur, he is the wasp's nipples. He is, I would go so far as to say, the entire set of erogenous zones of every major flying insect of the Western world.
The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals.
People |
The ordinary employment of artifice is the mark of a petty mind; and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover himself in one place uncovers himself in another.
Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.
Death |
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.
Only the contemptible fear contempt.
Conversation | People | Think |
The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.
Whatever difference may appear in the fortunes of mankind, there is, nevertheless, a certain compensation of good and evil which makes them equal.
What is commonly called friendship is no more than a partnership; a reciprocal regard for one another's interests, and an exchange of good offices; in a word, a mere traffic, wherein self-love always proposes to be a gainer.
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in Another moon; but O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, Like to a stepdame or a dowager, Long withering our a young man's revenue.
Day |
O thou day o' th' world, chain mine armed neck, leap thou, attire and all, through proof of harness to my heart, and there ride on the pants triumphing!
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York, and all the clouds that loured upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, our bruised arms hung up for monuments, our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; and now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, he capers nimbly in a lady's chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them,-- why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time, unless to spy my shadow in the sun. Richard III, Act i, Scene 1
Duke Ellington, fully Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington
It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.
O that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!