This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.
Experiment | Freedom | Law | Lesson | Order | Will | Work | Think |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
I do not oppose the insane asylum — but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives.
But what has been often urged as a consideration of much more weight, is not only the opinion of the better sort, but the general consent of mankind to this great truth; which I think could not possibly have come to pass, but from one of the three following reasons: either that the idea of a God is innate and co-existent with the mind itself; or that this truth is so very obvious that it is discovered by the first exertion of reason in persons of the most ordinary capacities; or, lastly, that it has been delivered down to us through all ages by a tradition from the first man. The Atheists are equally confounded, to whichever of these three causes we assign it.
Better | Desire | Good | Impression | Order | Time | Will | Words |
In short, a private education seems the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education for making a man of business. The first would furnish out a good subject for PlatoÂ’s republic, the latter a member for a community overrun with artifice and corruption.
Education | Means | Men | Nothing | Order | Reason | Service | Temper | Think |
Doth someone say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words no undue credence: for I say that kings kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, and doing thus are happier than those who live calm pious lives day after day. All divinity is built-up from our good and evil luck.
In order to keep that temper which is so difficult, and yet so necessary to preserve, you may please to consider, that nothing can be more unjust or ridiculous, than to be angry with another because he is not of your opinion. The interests, education, and means by which men attain their knowledge, are so very different, that it is impossible they should all think alike; and he has at least as much reason to be angry with you, as you with him. Sometimes, to keep yourself cool, it may be of service to ask yourself fairly, what might have been your opinion, had you all the biasses of education and interest your adversary may possibly have?
There is something so gross in the carriage of some wives that they lose their husbandsÂ’ hearts for faults which, if a man has either good-nature or good-breeding, he knows not how to tell them of. I am afraid, indeed, the ladies are generally most faulty in this particular; who at their first giving into love find the way so smooth and pleasant that they fancy it is scarce possible to be tired in it. There is so much nicety and discretion required to keep love alive after marriage, and make conversation still new and agreeable after twenty or thirty years, that I know nothing which seems readily to promote it but an earnest endeavor to please on both sides, and superior good sense on the part of the man.
Change | Desire | Despair | Esteem | Mind | Friendship | Value |
Go, words, betrayed the bite secreted in vain, the wind blowing in the heart. The real reason is most of those who keep silent
Difficulty | Man | Will |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and saying I must read that, too, when I've the time, replace it and continue the search.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.