This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The chief distinguishing feature of Russia in regard to the point we are examining is that the very beginning of the spontaneous working-class movement, on the one hand, and of the turn of progressive public opinion towards Marxism, on the other, was marked by the combination of manifestly heterogeneous elements under a common flag to fight the common enemy (the obsolete social and political world outlook).
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The gentle and vague regions in which I moved assets were poets, not the land of crime
Curiosity | Ignorance | Impression | Order |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.
Ignorance | Spirit | Superstition | Thought | Virginity | Virtue | Virtue | Thought |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I hate women because they always know where things are.
The observation of the breathing rhythm is suggested as a support to those who cannot arrive at the spontaneous stillness of total mind without some support. But to depend upon the support for a long period is undesirable and unwarranted. One has to discover for oneself whether one is learning self-reliance through the support or not. Simple observation of the breathing rhythm culminates into silence or total awareness within a few weeks. Secondly the hour of silence should enable one to live in awareness throughout the day.
Discovery | Existence | Freedom | Journey | Meaning | Religion | Revolution | Truth | Discovery |
It is not sufficient that a few in society penetrate to the depths of living and offer fascinating accounts about the oneness of all beings. What is necessary in these critical times is that all sensitive and caring people make a personal discovery of the fact of oneness and allow compassion to flow in their lives. When compassion and realization of oneness becomes the dynamic of human relationship, then humankind will evolve.
Attention | Care | Children | Freedom | Greed | Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Mistrust | Need | Peace | Responsibility | Study | Thought | Will | Thought |
If there is a willingness to face these unpleasant facts, and be with these facts, then we can proceed. If we enter into self-pity and depression, then negativity may lead to cynicism and bitterness against others and bitterness against the system. And releasing such negative energy does not help solve the problems. We have to stick with the facts as they are. Whether we like it or not, we are responsible participants in what is happening in the world.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
And I is high tide. Swell. He arches his back. I feel a fresh miss that cableaz? that proud steed that rider hits him with spurs and Harness it then. You, that I wear on his back, tell me what enemy is the one who came to see us, while our rings clatter on the pavement? 's Death. Death is the enemy. I can run against her spear lying down, with long hair flying behind me like tresses of a young man as you gallop Percival's tresses in India. Stick spurs into the horse's ribs. Unbridled and ruthless, I can run against you, Death! waves crashing to shore.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.
Belief | Body | Courage | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Opportunity | Past | Reality | Talking | Will | World |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Is it not possible — I often wonder — that things we have felt with great intensity have an experience independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will it not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them? … Instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past …
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.
Comfort | Consolation | Fate | Happy | Ignorance | Man | Trifles | World | Fate |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Belief | Body | Children | Courage | Determination | Effort | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Need | Opportunity | Past | Poverty | Power | Reality | Talking | Will | World | Worth |
Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
I praise good thoughts, good words, and good deeds and those that are to be thought, spoken, and done. I do accept all good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. I do renounce all evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.
Freedom |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.
Freedom |