This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can.
Hero |
The honey of heaven may or may not come, but that of earth both comes and goes at once.
If the stars that move together as one, disband, flying like insects of fire in a cavern of night, pipperoo, pippera, pipperum . . . The rest is rot.
The skreak and skritter of evening gone and grackles gone and sorrows of the sun, the sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon, the yellow moon of words about the nightingale in measureless measures, not a bird for me.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Stop giving bothersome people false rewards and they will stop bothering you.
Hero |
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were all there.
Day | Hero | Individual | Intelligence | Man | Mind | Science | Story | Think |
Tobias Smollett, fully Tobias George Smollett
Nature and wisdom are not, but should be, companions.
What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.
Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.
Will |
SALERINO: I saw Bassanio and Antonio part: Bassanio told him he would make some speed of his return: he answer'd, 'Do not so; slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio but stay the very riping of the time; and for the Jew's bond which he hath of me, let it not enter in your mind of love: be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts to courtship and such fair ostents of love as shall conveniently become you there: and even there, his eye being big with tears, turning his face, he put his hand behind him, and with affection wondrous sensible he wrung Bassanio's hand; and so they parted.
Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness my gregarious nature means I will never have to worry about being alone.
Hero |
It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.
Men | Nations | Opinion | Philosophy | Wise |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
We outgrow love like other things and put it in a drawer, till it an antique fashion shows like costumes grandsires wore.
Fear |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee.
Fear |