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
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Abstract | Body | Children | Dawn | Day | Fidelity | Hope | Insult | Love | Soul | Thinking | Time | Will | World | Insult |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
One can only blaspheme if one believes.
Greed | Tenderness | Friendship |
W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross
There are seven prima facie duties which need to be taken into consideration when deciding which duty should be acted upon: Duty of beneficence (to help other people to increase their pleasure, improve their character, etc.). Duty of non-maleficence (to avoid harming other people). Duty of justice (to ensure people get what they deserve). Duty of self-improvement (to improve ourselves). Duty of reparation (to recompense someone if you have acted wrongly towards them). Duty of gratitude (to benefit people who have benefited us). Duty of promise-keeping (to act according to explicit and implicit promises, including the implicit promise to tell the truth). [paraphrased]
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...
Consideration | Death | Disagreement | Inevitable | Loyalty | Loyalty | Opposition | Patriotism | Position | Reconciliation | Right | Slavery | Spirit |
Pascal told only half the story. He said man was a thinking reed. What man is, is a thinking reed and a walking genital.
Character | Civilization | History | Mediocrity | People | Sentiment | Time |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Faith always presented to the mind the idea of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised more than this, but it always included this. It was the opposite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent men called credulity, reverent men called faith; and although one word was more respectful than the other, yet the two words were with most men strictly synonymous.
Age | Character | Contemplation | Imagination | Men | Nature | Suffering | Contemplation | Old |
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Age | Art | Beauty | Consciousness | Culture | Elegance | Evidence | Excitement | Failure | Family | Good | Hate | Health | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Past | People | Politics | Recreation | Reward | Science | Self | Talking | Time | Work | World | Failure | Loss | Art | Beauty |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Take away the moral argument: persuade men that when ascribing to the Deity justice and mercy they are speaking of qualities generically distinct from those which exist among mankind -- qualities which we are altogether unable to conceive, and which may be compatible with acts that men would term grossly unjust and unmerciful: tell them that guilt may be entirely unconnected with a personal act, that millions of infants may be called into existence for a moment to be precipitated into a place of torment, that vast nations may live and die, and then be raised again to endure a never-ending punishment, because they did not believe in a religion of which they had never heard, or because a crime was committed thousands of years before they were in existence: convince them that all this is part of a transcendentally perfect and righteous moral scheme, and there is no imaginable abyss to which such a doctrine will not lead. You will have blotted out those fundamental notions of right and wrong which the Creator has engraven upon every heart; you will have extinguished the lamp of conscience; you will have taught men to stifle the inner voice as a lying witness, and to esteem it virtuous to disobey it. But even this does not represent the full extent of the evil.
Character | Experience | Important | Success | Intellect |
Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire
There's something really awful about the way people dress now. Everyone looks the same. Everyone wants to look neutral.
Progress |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
It is not national interests we are upholding — we claim that the interests of socialism, the interests of world socialism, rank higher than national interests, higher than the interests of the state. We are defenders of the socialist fatherland.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.
Bourgeoisie | Character | Means | Necessity | Rule | System |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
No one can any longer write in the fat style of Strauss. That was killed by Stravinsky. He stripped the body of much of its clothes. Music is the craft of building structures with sound and that is what Stravinsky represents.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.
Character | Conscience | Emotions | Family | History | Individual | Magic | Mind | Work | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Then slid up my arms that were waiting, radiant, relaxed, caressing me with her ??tender, mysterious, impure, indifferent eyes of twilight-neither more nor less than the most of the cheap whores. Nymphets. Why imitate them-while between the complaining we die
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger. And this being so, let us bless them, let us bless the freak; for in the natural evolution of things, the ape would perhaps never have become man had not a freak appeared in the family.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.
But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves.
Behavior | Change | Compassion | Design | Focus | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Motives | Need | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rest | Society | System | Will | Society |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things.