This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.
Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
It would be impossible to get through the kind of life that I have known without accumulating a vast unused stockpile of rage. Retaliation, though, was a luxury I could never afford. On the physical level I was too feeble. On any other I was not rich enough. I never dared to be rude to anyone. I never knew that I might not need him later. Long after fantasies of sexual excess had ceased to torment me, my imagination was inflamed by lurid day-dreams of having my revenge on the world.
Excess | Imagination | Life | Life | Luxury | Need | Revenge |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
Revenge |
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy. Underlying the prevalent health is death. All the movements of health resemble the reflex-movements of beings whose hearts have stopped beating.
For the passions of men, which asunder are moderate, as the heat of one brand, in assembly are like many brands that enflame one another, (especially when they blow one another with orations) to the setting of the commonwealth on fire, under pretense of counseling it.
When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. ‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies.’ ‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all cover’d with sheep.’ ‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, And then go home to bed.’ The little ones leapèd and shoutèd and laugh’d And all the hills echoèd.
Age | Doubt | Envy | Eternity | God | Gold | Good | Grave | Grief | Heaven | Hell | Innocence | Joy | Judgment | Knowledge | Light | Little | Passion | Philosophy | Public | Revenge | Right | Soul | Teach | Truth | Woe | Woman | Words | World | Worth | God | Child | Old |
The coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of the winner. I would no more play with a man that slighted his ill fortune than I would make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it.
Control | Enemy | Hate | History | Motives | Remorse | Revenge | Story | Tragedy | Old |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
The Wizard of Oz (M. G. M.) should settle an old Hollywood controversy: whether fantasy can be presented on the screen as successfully with human actors as with cartoons.
Enemy | Hate | History | Motives | Remorse | Revenge | Story | Tragedy | Old |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
No one snowflake ever feels responsible for the avalanche.
Revenge |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
One man is the echo of the next man, both wrongly assuming they are original sources.
If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals.
Hope | Humanity | Innocence | Men | Power | Revenge | Salvation | Vengeance |
You may indeed do many works of love and delight in them -- especially at such times as they are not inconvenient to your state or temper or occurrences in life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the spirit of your life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it.
Evil | God | Good | Love | Nature | Nothing | Reason | Revenge | Sin | Temper | Vengeance | Work | God |
Folk say, a wizard to a northern king at Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, that through one window men beheld the spring, and through another saw the summer glow, and through a third the fruited vines a-row, while still, unheard, but in its wonted way, piped the drear wind of that December day. So with this Earthly Paradise it is, if ye will read aright, and pardon me, who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss midmost the beating of the steely sea, where tossed about all hearts of men must be; whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay, not the poor singer of an empty day.
It is profit which draws men into enormous unmanageable aggregations called towns, for instance; profit which crowds them up when they are there into quarters without gardens or open spaces; profit which won’t take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers, which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose wretchedness there is no name