This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.
Enough | Imagination | Little | People | Praise | Wonder | Blessed |
Oh, trebly blest the placid lot of those whose hearth foundations are in pure love laid, where husband's breast with tempered ardor glows, and wife, oft mother, is in heart a maid!
If , then, we desire a simple test of the quality of our spiritual life, a consideration of the tranquility, gentleness and strength with which we deal with the circumstances of our outward life will serve us better than anything that is based on the loftiness of our religious notions, or fervor of our religious feelings.
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.
That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.
Accident | Cost | Danger | Debt | Defense | Despot | Enjoyment | Eternal | Faith | God | Government | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Nothing | People | Principles | Prophecy | Receive | Responsibility | Rights | Theories | Trust | Vigilance | Weakness | Will | Wise | Words | Government | Danger | God | Privilege | Understand |
Young people, your parents, with their maturity of years and experience you have not had, can provide wisdom, knowledge, and blessings to help you over life's pitfalls. You may find, that life's sweetest experiences come when you go to Mom and Dad for help.
Government | Little | Lord | Weakness | Government | Think |
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.
One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.
For a long time the conviction has been dimly felt in the community that, without prejudice to existing institutions, the legal day of weekly rest might be employed to advantage for purposes affecting the general good.
Criticism | Literature | Seclusion | Will |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
Praise |
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
Aid | Government | Need | Praise | Government |
With the first wife is matrimony, the second company, the third heresy.